


Traverse

by apparitionism



Series: Travel [3]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Finance AU, here we go again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a story called Travel, Helena Wells got into a cab with a tall financial advisor named Myka Bering... and was, initially at least, massively annoyed by her. But what effect did getting into a cab with a staggeringly beautiful British consultant named Helena Wells have on Myka Bering? This version of the tale begins as a simple reversal of the original Travel’s Helena-centric perspective, then takes the story to some different places. Did Myka really deserve what she got at that softball game? We’ll see...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Those who recall Travel may also recall that that story is told entirely from Helena’s point of view. Myka comes off at times as being… let’s just say “insensitive.” Some time ago, Tumblr's grumpyyetamusing asked if I would write, in essence, a reversed version of the story, so that Myka’s motivations and feelings would be more clear, since as we all know, Myka isn’t really insensitive; she’s just sometimes not so hot at processing. This somewhat inelegant perspective-flip in truth feels more like fanfic than Travel itself did, because I am filling interstices that were honestly never intended to be sensically filled. Here's hoping it's got some laughs, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: This first chapter begins where the [first chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/5581214) of Travel does, and carries on through chapter 9.

Myka is meticulous. She has never encountered a rule she did not follow.

She works for everything she gets, and she tries to work hard enough that everything comes as close to perfection as possible. People respect that, and they trust her because of it. Most importantly, they trust her with their money. Myka has found that money is an incredibly fraught subject, even a fraught _concept_ , for most people, and that what money really means to anyone changes dramatically over time, even from day to day. But she has also found that the more calm she is, the more controlled and rule-bound, the better most people—her clients, at any rate—are able to approach that fraught, meaning-twisting concept. She knows that her approach is not for everyone: she will never be the advisor who cashes in for windfall profits, but she will also never be the advisor who calls to say that sadly, your portfolio is worth half of what it was yesterday. She protects money: she gets as close to perfection as she can, and she does that by not making stupid mistakes.

That is why she is astonished at herself when, on a late afternoon in New York, she makes what is basically a rookie social mistake, one of inattention, because she is talking on her phone: she gets into a cab right as someone else is getting in that same cab on the other side. But she is just as astonished when the result of that rookie social mistake is that she finds herself sitting next to the most perfect woman in the world.

For it is as if god sat down and read Myka’s mind and put together a list of what she finds attractive and made this woman to measure, to match every single thing, and then added something extra that Myka would never have thought to put on that list. She doesn’t know precisely what that something extra is, but whatever it is, it’s fast-acting and shouldn’t be available without a prescription, because Myka’s finding it very difficult to think. She doesn’t really want to think, anyway; she just wants to reach across the cab and… and what? Grab her and… that is just not an acceptable impulse. First, because it’s an _impulse_ and thus not acceptable, but also because it’s just not at all acceptable to want to launch yourself at another person.

Her slack-jawed stare is going to become obvious, here in a minute, and this creature who absolutely cannot be real is going to slap Myka for that stare—she already looks irritated—so Myka tries to focus on the fact that she _is_ actually on the phone with Claudia. It’s important that she keep focusing on that familiar voice, one that can pull her back into herself, to make sure she does not close the distance across the back seat of this cab. (She is imagining all the things one can get up to in back seats. She hasn’t bothered to imagine those things before, but… there suddenly seem to be a lot of things.)

Okay, maybe she’s just tired. And she certainly is tired, but that’s no excuse for letting her thoughts get out of control. She tamps everything down, gives Claudia some instructions, promises to get Pete to the ideas meeting tomorrow, words as usual. That seems to work, and she tries to keep projecting some semblance of cool as they arrive at the airport. She thinks she does well, flipping a business card at her fellow passenger, saying she’ll buy her a drink if she’s ever in L.A. “And what exactly will you do, smooth operator, if she calls you?” she asks herself, but there’s no way she’ll call; Myka will never see her again. And that’s fine. That has to be fine. And yet Myka thinks about her, all the way to Chicago, lets herself think about how she doesn’t often let herself think about things like the things one can get up to in back seats.

In Chicago, Myka is waiting to see if she’ll be able to stretch her legs out in a first-class seat again when she looks beside her and sees—unbelievably—the woman from the cab. Myka feels a jolt that she reads, bizarrely, as _relief_. The woman is looking up at the monitor, probably for an upgrade of her own, and Myka should sidle away and pretend that she was never here. Instead, she opens her mouth and starts talking: “You really don’t have to stalk me to L.A. to get that drink.”

Understandably, she gets more irritation in response, which, she figures, pretty much guarantees that nobody will be calling anybody for a drink, regardless of the fact that, she has learned, they live in the same city. She wonders what she could possibly do to save the situation—because it’s true that the woman is just as perfectly beautiful, yes, even when she’s irritated, as she was in the taxi—but she doesn’t get a chance to try, as she’s rescued, or doomed, by the call to the podium for her upgrade.

Once she’s on the plane, Myka holds her breath, waiting for general boarding to start (because that perfectly irritated woman does not seem to have been upgraded to first class, and what would Myka have done, had she been, anyway?), waiting for her to walk by: and when she does, Myka does not look up, but she watches her legs move and tries to hide how she is watching her legs move, thinking for half a second (or more than that), “Oh, if I trip her, she might fall…”

One minute she’s thinking very warm thoughts about what it might be like to have that body fall into her lap, but the next… she’s asleep.

****

The next morning: “Pete, she’s here,” Myka says very quietly in the hallway outside Warehouse Finance’s conference room.

“She who?”

“The woman from the cab and the planes.”

“The one you’re so hot for that you told me about her before you even sat down at your desk this morning? _That_ woman? She’s here?” He peeks into the room. “Ooh, she _is_ hot. Ask her out right now, so I can watch!”

“I am not going to ask her out, now or ever. She’s one of the consultants!” Pete doesn’t have to know that when Myka first saw her, there in the conference room, she felt that same easing of tension she’d felt in Chicago, a thought legible only as “oh, _there_ she is.” This woman’s ability to assuage some worry that Myka never even knew had been gnawing at her apparently _also_ turns Myka into a bumbling idiot who spews offhand remarks and nothing else… but Pete doesn’t need to know about that either. “She’s here to tell us we’re doing our jobs wrong, or something equally useless,” she complains, “and I don’t want to be told that.”

“What does that have to do with asking her out? She’s _hot_.”

“Well, okay, _also_ I’m not going to ask her out.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You told me she made you weak in the knees.”

“That is _not_ what I told you. I told you she made my brain short out.”

“I don’t see how that’s not the same thing. If you don’t ask her out, I’m not going to the ideas meeting.”

“You are going to the ideas meeting.”

“No I’m not. I don’t need any ideas, and I’m pretty sure that hot lady in there gave you _plenty_ of ideas already.”

She drags him to the meeting. She does not think about money for one second, the entire time she is in the room. She feels that her face will burst into flames.

****

When H.G. Wells—her name is stupid, and thus stupidly perfect—does not show up first thing the following morning to meet with Myka, as Claudia swore to Myka was intended to happen, Myka is so relieved she wants to celebrate. There is a very expensive bottle of bourbon in the third drawer on the right of her desk, and she wonders if today is the day to open it. Then she wonders why she wants to celebrate not looking at that face. Maybe this whole situation would work out if Myka could just sit and look at her… she could pretend that none of it has to do with business, and she could also keep her mouth shut… because she is turning out to be very good at putting that fractious expression on H.G. Wells’s face.

As it happens, the fractious expression returns only a very short while after H.G. Wells herself does: because she hasn’t given up and disappeared, as Myka had hoped. She has just gotten the time wrong, failing to understand what “market open” means, here on the West Coast, as so many people do, and Myka tries so hard to be dismissive, to reveal nothing… she turns and walks away, but she is terrified that Claudia, at the very least, will have seen how Myka is having to fight against herself.

She tries to avoid her, this H.G. Wells. Tries to pretend that it is all because of not wanting to deal with social media, that and whatever else it is that she and her tall colleague Steve Jinks are trying to sell. (He seems nice. Myka feels bad about being dismissive with him, but what can she do?) She tries not to think about any of it, ignores their e-mails, figures that eventually they will go away, as consultants do, and she can finally stop skulking around, making excuses to stay hidden behind her office door.

Her day trip to visit clients comes as such a relief… her head clears for what feels like the first time since she met H.G. Wells. The time in the car is restorative, and she comes back to town, back to work, with a stride that is normal, not tentative. Comes back to hear Claudia say “Oh, she was really upset that you weren’t here. I don’t know, Myka, she might think you’re her personal property or something…”

And this makes Myka angry, because she is no one’s personal property. She can go on client visits as she wants to, and no devastating beauty preposterously named H.G. Wells is going to stop her. So late on Thursday afternoon, when Myka’s getting ready to leave for her sanda training session, when Claudia says that H.G. Wells wants to see Myka in the conference room? If H.G. Wells seriously thinks she can order Myka around like that? Oh, Myka will be happy to put an end to that kind of presumption.

H.G. Wells wants to discuss “buy-in,” apparently—which is to say, Myka buying into the consultants’ ideas about the business of finance. H.G. Wells is also, apparently, ready for a fight, and if that’s what she wants, oh, Myka can certainly provide it. Certainly and easily… yet at the same time Myka wants to yield, so she can get away, and fine, she will just _do_ whatever it is they want her to do so she can avoid being in a fight at all. Fights are unpredictable, and that is one reason why she took up martial arts in the first place, so that she could develop some sense of bodily control in situations of aggression. Not in a real fight, because she is far too unskilled to ever hold her own in a real fight. But the physical discipline of kicking and grappling, and the habits of mind it takes to deploy the proper techniques—those carry over. Even in the largest arguments, now, Myka at least has the illusion of maintaining stability.

But this does not hold true when she is fighting with H.G. Wells. The fight escalates, and they say ridiculous things to each other (with some small voice inside Myka now screaming “you win you win you win just please stop and go away!”). And when they are fighting, when they are breathing heavily at each other, when H.G. Wells has, in seeming desperation, used a perfect stretch and push of arm to bodily prevent Myka from leaving the room—Myka had for half a second thought she herself might be strong enough to knock her back and escape—oh, but when that perfect voice, that impossible-to-disobey voice, snaps “Don’t you dare”… and its owner lunges, or maybe only leans, and she is so close, and she smells like apples and does beauty itself smell like something? Because that is what Myka finds in her lungs. She won’t be able to breathe again until she knows what it’s like to kiss that angry mouth, so she does, again and again and again. But it has to be her imagination that that mouth is kissing her, too, that when Myka makes a halfhearted attempt to pull away, she is pulled back, to be kissed with the same fervor and need… Myka has not _needed_ to kiss someone in so long, and maybe never this much, and if the person she is kissing needs to kiss her, too… but that could not possibly be happening. She has to get out, and get out now, before she makes any more of a fool of herself.

She gets out of the room, but she can’t wait for the elevator; H.G. Wells might come out too, and then Myka would have to stand there and _look_ at her and even _say words_ to her, so Myka ducks into her office, grabs her work bag and gym bag, and runs for the stairs. Her dash down them is reckless, two at a time, and she is quite honestly surprised to find herself in one piece when she crashes through the door to the parking garage.

At her session, her instructor, who is nearly a foot shorter than she is and at least ten times as coordinated, takes her down again, and again, and again, so often that Myka decides she’ll just stay on her back on the mat for a while, once the training ends. Winston doesn’t care what she wears for their sessions, so she is usually, as she is today, dressed in a sports bra and basketball shorts. Sometimes she feels a little bit cool about that: she is tall and has a decent body and practices martial arts. Now, today, she is tall yet supine, has a bruised body, and sucks at martial arts. The look seems, today, a bit less than cool.

“Sometimes you don’t seem to be learning much,” Winston says to her as she lies there, thinking about her body and disasters. It’s the only time he gets to loom above her, when he knocks her down, that is, and he does seem to enjoy the perspective. “You know, some financial advisors can fight. Abigail manages to get my legs out from under me at least once a week, so why can’t you?”

“Because I’m very very bad at everything,” Myka tells him.

“Then I guess I better get my money away from you,” he says, but he laughs.

“Except that,” she says.

“I don’t know; Abigail’s pretty smart too.”

“I met you first. You’ve been beating up on me for years longer.”

“And yet there you lie.”

“Here I lie,” Myka agrees. “A tragic victim of… something.”

“Maybe you’re a tragic victim of liking a girl.”

Myka thinks she might have too much sweat in her ears to hear correctly. “Did you say ‘liking a girl’?”

He shrugs. “That’s what Abigail told me.”

“Great,” Myka groans, because that is _exactly_ what she needs right now: Abigail, all over the city, in some performance piece titled “I Am Here To Inform You, People Of Los Angeles, That Myka Likes a Girl.”

The next morning, Myka says to Claudia, regarding that girl that Abigail is informing the people of Los Angeles about, “Send her to my office, right now.” She doesn’t know what she expects to accomplish with this, not really… but she should at least be able to get some kind of _standing_ back. Be businesslike again; reestablish boundaries. Myka tells herself that she’ll apologize as sincerely as she possibly can, because she knows she made a huge mistake yesterday, just from a human resources standpoint. So all right, maybe if she thinks about the whole situation as a human resources mistake, then she can deal with it like a professional. “I’m sorry I kissed you,” she can say. Or, no, don’t lead with that; don’t talk about kissing. Lead with, “I’m sorry we haven’t been getting along.” No, that sounds like some cheap line, like what Myka wants is for them to _get along_  some more, like they did yesterday. “I’m sorry I’m such an idiot,” she tries, and that’s closer; it’s certainly accurate, but she should probably be more specific: “I’m sorry I’m the kind of idiot who wants to kiss you,” but no, again, that sounds insulting, because obviously plenty of people who aren’t idiots must want to kiss H.G. Wells, and it’s about kissing again, and d _on’t mention kissing_. “I’m sorry I keep making mistakes”—wrong again, because then she’ll think that Myka means everything, and everything Myka does isn’t a mistake; it’s just around _her_. “I’m sorry I keep making mistakes around you.” That’s not perfect (of course not, because it’s something she’s going to try to say to H.G. Wells), but it will have to do.

But then the inspirer of mistakes herself is standing at the door to her office, saying “Please don’t dispose of Claudia’s post-its,” and the way her mouth moves is mesmerizing. This is what being possessed must feel like, Myka reasons with whatever neurons are still available to her to use for reasoning: she grabs her by the shirt and pulls her into the office, presses their mouths together again because she _can’t not_. She knows what it feels like to kiss that mouth and she _can’t not_ do it again. She is howling at herself that this is wrong, that she is making the exact same mistake with even more clarity that it _is_ a mistake… but the howling stops for one moment, then another, then another, a few moments of grace, because for those moments they are just kissing, so deeply, their hands moving everywhere, so freely… but then Myka realizes she has pulled a shirttail loose, and that she has, horrifyingly, got her hands up under that shirttail. Myka isn’t, _can’t be_ , the kind of person who would do such a thing. She pushes herself away, can’t look up, can barely even say one word out loud, not until she’s alone again.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: This chapter covers the original Travel's [chapter 10](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/5950004) through chapter 15.

Myka spends the entire weekend trying to figure out how to make amends for what she’s done, what she _keeps on_ doing. What needs to happen, she decides, is a conversation in a place with no closeable door, a _public_ place where apologies can be offered with abasement and then, she hopes, accepted, if only because it would be bad form not to accept.

But she gets no opportunity for that, not on Monday, because H.G. Wells is _not there_. Not there at all, and Myka holds out for two hours after market open before she is standing in front of Claudia’s desk, demanding, “Where is she?” When Claudia shrugs helplessly—while saying “Beats me, Juliet,” which Myka decides she cannot spare the brain cells to decipher—Myka tries to ask Steve, casually, “Where is she?” When he gives a similar shrug, accompanied by a similarly incomprehensible utterance about experiments on human subjects, Myka gives up and goes back to her office and sits at her desk and broods, “Where is she?”

She broods and broods and broods.  What if… what if H.G. Wells quit? What if it’s Myka’s fault, and she’s decided never to come back to Warehouse Finance again, because of Myka and her horrible mistakes? But wouldn’t Steve know if she’d quit? But maybe they’re just not that close? She can’t ask Artie; he hates the consultants, even though he’s putting on what is, for him, a very polite show. She doesn’t know what to do, and she doesn’t know how to find anything out…

Myka doesn’t sleep at all on Monday night. She is formulating a plan for talking further to Steve—he seems nice, Pete says he’s nice and so does Abigail; he will surely be nice about it—and asking him to convey a message about how Myka knows she’s done some things that were foolish, but that H.G. Wells doesn’t have to worry about Myka _at all_ anymore. Not at all. She comes in on Tuesday exhausted but ready to swear that all her thoughts are pure, all her intentions are good.

She hasn’t been in her office five minutes before she hears that rich satin voice, talking to Claudia. She hears that voice and she wants to cry, because her thoughts aren’t pure at all. Her intentions… her intentions aren’t truly bad, and, all right, maybe now at least she can start getting over those intentions, once she apologizes for her _actions_ , which certainly haven’t been good.

When Myka opens her office door, when they catch each other’s eyes, something comes to a halt. For once, Myka’s blood does not start galloping; she is not being _driven crazy_ , maybe because H.G. Wells doesn’t look entirely herself, for once. She looks tired, a little muddled, but also—and this is the essential element—as she gazes at Myka, she is _not angry_. She is so _not angry_ that she walks to Myka’s door. She doesn’t say anything. Myka steps to the side, and she walks into the office.

Myka thinks, _I should not close the door_ , but she closes the door.

She thinks, _I should not move closer_ , but she moves closer.

But she is holding steady; she has not lunged, and she has not touched.

Not, that is, until she is the one being touched, being pulled, and she is losing her already precarious balance and falling even closer. She can’t help herself now: she murmurs “where _were_ you yesterday,” in what is to her ears an embarrassingly fretful voice, a voice that says too much about wanting and _missing_.

It’s fretful, but it’s soft: everything between them is soft now. Their kiss, when it comes, is a surrendering blur, and if Myka had thought that last week’s desperate clashes were what she wanted? Well, she had thought that, hadn’t been able to stop thinking that, to her ongoing shame—but now she knows better. Now she knows softer, and sweeter, and oh so much better.

“I genuinely thought we couldn’t stand each other,” H.G. Wells says eventually.

“Maybe we can’t,” Myka says, “except for this,” and what she means is, you probably _can’t_ stand me, except, by some miracle, for this, but I want to try to have this until you remember that you can’t stand me. And maybe I can’t stand you, either, because you make me act like a fool… but I want to try to have this until I remember that that’s a bad thing.

They manage to make plans to have coffee together later, once the market closes. For the rest of the trading day, as the time ticks down untenably slowly, Myka carefully dismantles, then reassembles, every single one of her pens, one after the other, even the cheap ones that she has to bite open, while she imagines trying to sit somewhere in public and pretend she is able to think of normal words to say.

There is no coffee. Instead they find themselves behind that closed office door again, and they find themselves reaching for each other again—and yes, that is the difference: they are reaching _for each other_ now. Myka has never felt anyone reach for her like this, and no one has ever made her reach with her own hands so definitively. She wants to reach and pull and rise and fall and is this love? Because that is the word that she seems unable to push away, and every time she tries, it pushes back with more force: as they decide to go together on Myka’s scheduled client visits the next day; as they drive together, in the morning, all the way to Barstow; as they spend time, perfect time, talking about real things and nothing.

By the time they are in San Bernardino, having dinner with the Flynns, Myka’s oldest and dearest clients, Myka has no more strength to oppose the word or what it signifies. Helena—for she introduced herself to Lillian and Ed as Helena, and Myka can’t imagine her as anything else now; H.G., those harsh initials, will never again apply—says all the right things. She says the right things even when Myka feels like she could die because Lillian and Ed are insisting that Helena will no doubt find a good man, that Myka will find the right man too, and Myka says what she always does, that the right man doesn’t exist. They would not understand if she told them what she really means by that; Lillian customarily, at this point in the conversation, tells Myka that she is just too picky, and Myka has been happy to let that stand as the truth. But tonight she wants to apologize to Helena for this regularly committed sin of omission, for never standing up and saying “No, not the right man.” She tries to convey that apology with a look, but the way Helena looks back suggests that Myka has said a great deal more than “I’m sorry I never said ‘not a man’”; instead, it is as if Myka has shouted “not a man, but a woman, but not _a_ woman: you.”

And that will be Abigail’s next performance piece: I Am Here To Inform You, People Of San Bernardino, That Myka Likes A Girl, Although You Probably Don’t Need To Be Informed About That, Because The Extent To Which Myka Is On Fire For That Girl Can Be Seen From Space.

Helena offers to help Ed clear the table, and she reaches down to pick up Myka’s plate. As she does so, she brushes her hand against Myka’s neck. Myka revises “Seen From Space” to “Seen From Distant Galaxies Without A Telescope”—and Helena clearly knows that perfectly well, because she looks back from the kitchen, over her shoulder, at Myka. Then she very calmly turns and comments to Ed, “You’ll have to give me your recipe for that delightful chutney so I can pass it along to my brother. It’s rhubarb, you said?”

Lillian says to Myka, “You look a little flushed. Are you all right, dear?”

Myka listens to Helena talking animatedly about rhubarb, as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. Her voice certainly makes it sound like the most fascinating thing in the world. “I am _fine_ ,” she tells Lillian. “I am surprisingly fine.”

Surprisingly fine: when they are at last alone, in the driveway, Helena leans to Myka, who is holding a bouquet of flowers Ed has given them. Myka knows she will remember these flowers forever and ever, because Helena says “Wait,” and she leans, and she kisses Myka _through_ the flowers. A white snapdragon petal catches in the corner of the kiss, and Helena has already shown Myka what beauty smells like; now she knows its taste. “Helena,” Myka says. It is the first time she’s said her name, her perfect name. “Helena, if I ask you…” She doesn’t know how to ask, doesn’t know if Helena truly feels the same pull, this same inability to resist—when resisting would be a much better idea, Myka is sure. The words that are threatening to leave her mouth are too revealing, too precipitous; this crazy free-fall will stop because Myka will hit the ground and die, or even just wake up. But that face, that kiss… what Myka feels, how much she feels, all of it is so uncontrolled, and Helena, too, will of course wake up at some point and realize that this is not what she wants. But when Myka, propelled by bravery she is sure must be borrowed from somewhere—and there will be hellish interest to pay—says she wants to find a hotel room, Helena doesn’t say no. Instead, she says words that even Myka, even in her addled state, understands to mean that Helena wants this too, feels this too.

What Myka wants to say in response is a prayer of thanksgiving; what Myka will say, if she tries to talk, is something stupid. So instead of talking, she puts the flowers in the car. Then she pulls Helena to her and kisses her again, body to body, and even Myka, even in her fine but addled state, can feel their bodies learning how to fit each other—heights, angles, motions, reciprocations.

Helena pulls away, just a few inches, and smiles at Myka. She says, “I think we had better get into the car, or we will be conducting a revealing experiment regarding what can and cannot be accomplished on a driveway.”

Myka smiles too. Still brave—made more brave by that kiss—she says, “I would very willingly participate in that experiment.”

This makes Helena laugh. “Would you sign a consent form to that effect?”

If that’s a joke, it’s one that Myka doesn’t get, but she nods anyway. Helena then says, “And yet that might make the Flynns, should they glance out the window, question our commitment to the search for appropriate male companionship. Why don’t we find that hotel room instead.”

But when they are in the car and looking for a hotel, “surprisingly fine” begins to recede, and Myka’s hands begin to shake on the wheel, because… because she doesn’t know the rules here, and this is not something to be making up as she goes along, and anyway she has never been able to improvise when it counts.

****

They get into the motel room—not a hotel room, that would have been too much to ask fate for, apparently—and she can’t. Oh god she can’t. It won’t work; it’s fine to imagine what they could do together, but… but Helena is going to expect her to be _good at this_ , because Myka has said words of bravado about what she wants, but Myka is not _good at this_. She’s competent. At best. Nobody’s ever really complained, but then again she hasn’t actually done this with that many people.

(If she’d known this was going to happen, maybe she could’ve worked through some tutorial, some online refresher course—because it’s been a long time! It’s probably _different_ now! With different _words_ for everything, and Helena will know them, Myka is sure, because _look_ at her, oh god, _look_ at her. She’ll know _everything_ , and she’ll have done it all, six different ways, and Myka will never be able to measure up to any of those ways.)

Myka wants so much to be sophisticated, cosmopolitan—yet she’s just a girl from Colorado. She puts on a good front in the big city, knows a lot of people, does a lot of things. Makes a lot of money. Lives a satisfying life. Sometimes she looks at her life and really _believes_ it. But then she’ll look in a mirror at the wrong moment, from the wrong angle, and she’ll see her Colorado self, and she’ll stumble, gracelessly, back into the shoes of that girl who never did anything but stumble anyway.

Helena, too, makes Myka stumble, turns her, internally at least, back into that awkward girl who despaired of ever being able to put one foot in front of the other. When Myka was fourteen, she became truly tall very quickly, so quickly that she did not understand, for a while, where the top of her head was. The living room in her family’s house in Colorado Springs had an overhead light–ceiling fan combination, the pull-cord of which hung down such that a person of short-to-normal height, which her mother, father, and sister were—are—could reach, with a hand above the head. Once Myka grew, the cord hit the top of her head every time she walked through the room, every time for weeks, a constant reminder that she was too tall and, worse, too stupid to understand that she was too tall. Helena turns her back into that girl, too, the one who didn’t know herself well enough to know when to duck.

She can’t get it right. She can’t. So she might as well not try, oh in spite of the way Helena’s body seems to rise to hers, the way her mouth on Helena’s seems, beyond all sense, to become truly _meaningful_ … but it won’t work, because Helena should be with someone who knows who she really is and doesn’t hit her head on anything. Someone who doesn’t stumble.

Myka is not that person.

(Years later, she’ll look back. She’ll know that it’s all right that Helena makes her stumble, because as often as that still happens, as often as her inability to believe trips her up or hits her in the head, Helena also, every day, brings her closer to having faith in what she sees. And what she sees most clearly is that Helena is the person who stands beside her, and that she’s the person who stands beside Helena. She sees, too, that she’s the person Helena dances with in the kitchen, the person Helena curls against for comfort in the night, the person Helena calls to from the other end of a grocery aisle to ask “do you need another box of this abomination you call tea”—and that all of those people trump, yet include, that girl from Colorado. But in a motel room in San Bernardino, she knows none of this yet, doesn’t know that she wants it yet, doesn’t even know how to want it yet.)

What she knows how to want, in the first moments in this motel room in San Bernardino, is to _leave_ this motel room in San Bernardino. She is trying to work up to saying “let’s just leave,” because if they leave, it will always have been something that _might have been_ great. It _might have been_ something that Myka did not mess up. Probably not, but it might have been. So she tries to pretend, as she is working up to getting away, that everything is fine…

But Helena doesn’t believe her, and Helena makes her say words about why everything isn’t fine. Suddenly she is telling Helena the _truth_ , that she doesn’t do this, that she can’t follow through, and Myka is not sure how it happens, but first they’re fighting and then they’re… not fighting. She has Helena pressed against the door, and Helena is making it very clear that she is very committed to staying in this motel room and doing exactly what they came here to do.

It is astonishing. And perfect. So, so perfect. Helena’s hands, everywhere, doing exactly what Myka has ached for them to do. Her mouth, just as Myka has been imagining since, honestly, those first moments in the taxi. Myka wants to fall to her knees to worship this amazing woman, this amazing woman who seems, against all expectation, to be _enjoying herself_ with Myka, _liking_ what they are doing… oh god, except when Myka gets it wrong, and she says sorry, sorry—but even that isn’t wrong enough for this perfect woman, who wants to try again, and again, and again. She wants to try, and she wants to laugh, and if Myka had not been in love before—but she was in love before—she would be in love now.

A point comes, in the night, when she forgets herself. Helena has just choked out Myka’s name, with an arch of her back and then a dissolving drape of her body over Myka’s. Myka already recognizes the hitch Helena’s breathing takes on, just a little delay before each inhalation, that tells Myka she is close, close, close. And then to have her own name be the culmination of those breaths? Her name, from those lips, at that moment… of course Myka forgets herself. She says it all; she whispers, “You’re perfect and I love you.” But one instant later, she remembers herself, and she is hoping Helena was so overcome that she did not hear; she quickly says, a bit more loudly, “Are you all right? Do you need to move?”

“Not at all,” Helena mumbles against Myka’s neck. “Not at this moment. I can’t; you’ve robbed me of the ability.”

“Then don’t,” Myka tells her. “Don’t ever move again. Stay right here.” She runs her hands over Helena’s body. She’s so slack she might be liquid, and Myka bathing in her.

Helena is still murmuring slow, drowsy words, very near Myka’s ear: “I don’t see why you would say your follow-through isn’t good. I think what just happened establishes definitively that your follow-through is heavenly.”

“Yours is better,” Myka downplays.

“Is it a competition? If it is, I’m happy to have you take the prize.”

Myka smiles. “What’s the prize?”

“Perhaps it’s a medal.” Helena runs her fingers across Myka’s chest, where a medal might be placed.

Myka says, “I think that would be uncomfortable. Right now.” But she shifts her hips in a way that is not at all uncomfortable.

“A crown?”

“Also not what I want to be wearing under the circumstances.”

“Is there something you _would_ like to be wearing? Under the circumstances?” Now Helena’s the one who shifts her hips.

“I… would have to think about that.”

“All right. Think about it. In any way you like.” And now Helena pulls her head back and smiles at Myka. The smile is sexy and wicked and does she mean to do these things? She _must_ mean to do these things.

Myka accuses, “You are doing this on purpose.”

Helena blinks, so innocently. “Doing what?”

Making me turn red and want to die of embarrassment, Myka wants to say. Making me want you so much I can’t think of anything else. Making me fall in love so hard my head hurts from the impact.

Myka doesn’t say any of those things, though; she turns Helena over and tries to show her, one more time, how very much in love she is.

In love, but she knows it won’t last. This is temporary, because at some point Helena will see what a mistake she’s made—because Myka will do something that makes it very clear—and everything will go back to normal. This is temporary. This is perfect, this is love, but this is temporary.

****

It is the very opposite of perfect in the morning, because they oversleep by _hours_ , here in their refuge of a motel room, and Myka behaves like the fool that she understands, afresh, she is: she flips. She _knows_ she is too upset, and she desperately wants to stop acting like it, but all she can think is that this is a huge neon arrow pointing at the complete wrongness of what she’s done: in particular, that moment when she forgot herself, and she knows now that it was not just in the night that that had happened.

She recovers from her initial foolishness—not well, but she does—and then she brilliantly manages to pick another fight in the car; she magically recovers from that too, but this is all because Helena is somehow better, more tolerant, than a normal person, she is sure. When they get back to the office she is so punch-drunk, and so glad to be back on familiar ground, that she begins to think that everything might be fine, that there might be some new level of normal in which she just gazes at Helena and then kisses her and doesn’t let any other ideas, any disturbing ideas, in.

In the late afternoon, they are back in Myka’s office, behind a closed door, and they are kissing in a way that Myka is pretty sure only people who’ve just had a night of overpowering intimacy could do—and she is suffused by her body’s memory of the night, and that in turn brings another shocking wave of bravado, and she is asking Helena to come home with her so they can do it all again.

But then, with Helena’s “No, but…” answer, the disturbing ideas are back, full force, and Myka reminds herself that this is why it’s better to stay on guard than to let yourself fall into things: because nothing is ever really perfect. Because Helena has a daughter, and she has asked Myka to come home with her to Encino instead and _meet_ that daughter, and Myka knows beyond any doubt that she and kids do not mix. She and kids of romantic partners, that is, because if there is one thing with the potential for engendering mistakes? _Unpredictable_ mistakes? It’s partners and kids and Myka in combination with them. So she decides, one more time—why is she having to make this decision again?—to put a stop to this runaway train that she turns into when she is with Helena, to step off before it becomes too much, before something explodes and there can be no careful step off because there will be nothing left to step off _from_.

It kills her. It kills her to look at Helena every day and remember what they’ve done, what it could have meant, how much they might have been to each other, because now she’s had a taste, now she knows. But she tries so hard to keep her mind out of that San Bernardino motel room… that’s just bodies, she tries to explain to herself, just bodies that want each other, and there will be other bodies someday, unencumbered bodies. Surely, someday, there will be unencumbered bodies.

And yet they won’t be Helena. They won’t drive with her to Barstow and San Bernardino, they won’t have smiled at Claudia’s post-its exactly the way Myka herself does—they won’t, on returning impossibly late on that morning from San Bernardino, happily _wear_ a post-it on which Claudia has written “Busted.” Their post-it won’t match Myka’s, which reads “Super-busted.” They won’t get teased by both Claudia and Steve about having gone to Pomona and protest vociferously, comically, about having not in fact gone to Pomona at all (it had something to do with where they were on the freeway, the morning after, when Steve called Helena, but Myka hadn’t wanted to ask too many questions at that point). They won’t kiss Myka, that day after, like all they ever wanted to do was make that much love again.

But they also won’t look so destroyed when Myka says no, this won’t work—because Myka won’t have to say no, this won’t work.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags (slightly edited): the thing about Travel really, is that everybody is such an idiot, ALSO also, do you know what comes next?, Myka has to deal with the idea of Christina, and with whom is she likely to conversate regarding that?, Abigail!, because of reasons, and also Kelly Hu can do anything as far as I'm concerned, Dickens I will fight you for her, or maybe not, because I am happily married, but still she is every bit of awesome, maybe I will just settle for actually casting her as CIA director, one of these days, (don't dismiss that out of hand)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: This chapter covers Travel's [chapter 16](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/6293732) and chapter 17.

Myka spends a Monday visiting clients: today, they are clients in very high-toned Los Angeles office buildings, a few in Beverly Hills mansions, and one—who is even more wealthy than those in Beverly Hills—in a tiny Silverlake bungalow. She comes in on Tuesday not refreshed, as she remembers feeling so long ago after a respite from Helena’s presence, nor happily stunned, as she so very recently was after spending time in Helena’s presence, but resigned to fight on, in a seemingly endless battle, against a middle-distance nightmare of Helena’s presence: she is always down a hall, across a room, definitively out of Myka’s reach but not far enough away to make Myka stop wanting to reach.

And yet the middle-distance nightmare is not, as it turns out, what she gets today. Instead, as she is setting her bag down in the office, trying to plot out how her day will go, she looks up and suddenly Helena is right there in front of her—Myka tries to voice something, but if she does, it is about as insightful as “huh?” or “what?”, because there is only a nanosecond between when she’s standing, looking stupefied, and then sitting, being pushed down into her chair by Helena’s hands and, more importantly, her mouth. Because they are embroiled in a kiss, one in which Myka is straining up to reach more of Helena, her hands on Helena’s body, trying to pull her down and make her stay in whatever fantasy Myka is having, here at 5 AM on a Tuesday. Maybe. _Maybe_ it’s still Tuesday—or maybe it’s time, rather than her mind, that’s slipped its chain, and maybe they’re back in the motel room, because Myka remembers _very distinctly_ sitting in that room’s cheap chair at that room’s cheap desk and being kissed in exactly this way, and what will happen now is that Helena will fall against Myka, into her lap, and they will laugh at how they have been silly enough to make use of the chair when there is a perfectly good bed, and they will move to the bed—but then, just as suddenly, Helena is pulling away, and she is _walking_ away, and then Myka’s office door opens and closes, and Helena is gone.

Myka’s body is extremely confused, so very much so that it takes her a length of time even to _stand_ , even to _move her feet_ , to get herself to the door and yell “hey!”—to no one but Claudia, who is the very voice and picture of innocence, and then Helena herself marches up, _also_ the very voice and picture of innocence, and Myka just can’t take it. She’d grab Helena and drag her back to the office to interrogate her, if she could, but she certainly can’t do that in front of Claudia. So she tries, as always, to say words as carefully as she can—which means, of course, that she has most likely made a fool of herself.

She spends the morning wondering _what_ Helena could possibly be up to—but she also works like a frenzied first-year FA, just to show that Helena will not get the satisfaction of having distracted her again. Near the end of the trading day, however, she runs out of people to call, trades to make, and her curiosity begins to take up more and more space in her thoughts. Helena has been avoiding her just as assiduously as she’s been avoiding Helena, so why would today be any different?

The reason that today is different, she discovers, is that Helena has decided to _drive Myka crazy_ until she agrees to meet Helena’s daughter. And Myka resists—she tells herself later that she did resist, she must have, because she could not have known how things would turn out, because she must still have seen disaster racing toward her at freeway speed—but in the end she is made of human. She’s a body made of human, and she’s still so, so in love. No matter what Helena says, it absolutely is _Lysistrata_ , and Myka feels for poor Kinesias, she really does, because if his wife had looked like, talked like, _felt like_ Helena? The Peloponnesian War would have ended _toot sweet,_ as the phonetics would have it, and here Myka is, agreeing to end their war, collapsing like the cheap umbrella she is, saying yes to everything Helena wants—everything except, and she puts an admittedly perverse foot down on this, driving to Encino. God, _Encino_. Myka has let herself be incentivized, or disincentivized, or however Helena put it, into meeting Helena’s daughter—but Encino is a _bridge too far_.

What is not a bridge too far is what they do next: they go to lunch. It’s lovely. Then they come back from lunch, and it’s even more lovely; they are making out like teenagers in Myka’s car, despite the fact that they are both supposed to be in a meeting that started ten minutes ago. “They’ll know we’re together,” Myka warns, but she doesn’t move her mouth very far away from Helena’s as she speaks.

“Everyone knows anyway,” Helena says.

“They don’t know we’re back together,” Myka tells her.

“They didn’t know we were ever—” Helena gasps as Myka’s teeth find her earlobe—“not together.”

“Not _ever_ not together? They think we’ve been together forever?”

“Not _before_. Between. Pomona and now. Oh my god, stop breathing in my ear like that.”

“You aren’t making any sense. Before, between, Pomona.”

Helena laughs. “Neither are you. Go back to breathing in my ear.”

They both do seem to make a great deal more sense when they stop talking… so for five more minutes, they don’t talk at all.

****

Myka is determined, now that she has thrown her hands up and surrendered, to make another try at being perfect for Helena.

So naturally, she finds herself sitting in Abigail’s office, complaining to her that there is no way she could ever possibly be perfect enough for Helena.

“You’re rehearsing a scene from a play, right?” Abigail asks her. “Because there’s no way you are honestly upset about your supposed inability to match the supposed perfection of that girl you keep winking at.”

“One time!” Myka protests. “I winked at her one time!”

“And I know you did it to make me laugh, and it worked. So I guess I’m still confused about what the problem is. You think she’s going to wake up one morning and be upset that you don’t wink at her enough?”

“No! I think she’s going to wake up on _Sunday_ morning, after I meet her kid on Saturday night, and realize that I was right all along, that kids and I don’t mix!”

“So now what you’re saying is that this is a win-win for you: either you were right, so you get the satisfaction of being right, which is pretty satisfactory, or you were wrong, and in that case you get the satisfaction of being able to keep winking at that girl.” Abigail is, while she talks, paging through a report. “Gilead or Amgen, if you had to pick?”

“To hold? Amgen, for the higher yield; I’ve got people in that. Otherwise, probably Gilead. It jumps around more, so you could get really lucky. I’d still sell a call, though, because you could get really unlucky, too. And I’m not sure I followed that right-wrong thing.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re fine with kids, so I don’t see the problem.”

“How can you say that? Violet still won’t talk to me because of what happened!”

“Oh, she’ll talk to you. In a loud voice, mostly expletives, but she’s perfectly willing to talk to you.”

“You’re not helping.”

Claudia’s desk showcases post-its; Abigail’s is covered in reusable rubber twist ties, ranging from three inches to a foot long, in a rainbow of colors that does rival that of the post-it sea. Liam had one day hit on the brilliant idea of giving the bendable ties to Abigail to keep her hands busy making sculptures so she wouldn’t hit him or throw things at him—and now she grabs a neon-orange one and shapes it into what Myka thinks might be a fishhook. “I’m also not serious. She’s over it, she’s over you. How long’s she been with what’s-her-name? A year? Two?”

“She isn’t over the fact that what I did hurt Paul.”

“Well, no. But she’s also not over the fact that one of his little soccer buddies fouled him so hard it dislocated his shoulder, and that happened when he was _five_.” A black six-inch tie becomes a cobra, rearing back, about to strike. “C’mon, Myka, he’s her kid. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that my sister—who is generally pretty smart—didn’t understand what she was getting into with you.”

“See? Exactly. Helena doesn’t understand either, even though I keep trying to tell her. It’s the same thing.”

Abigail shakes her head. “Why do you think that? It certainly isn’t starting the same way.”

“Well, no. I’m not traveling through China with her family.”

Abigail takes another tie—yellow this time—and bends it into a right angle. Then she holds it up in front of Myka’s face and pulls its ends apart, very slowly, widening the angle.

“Okay, I get it,” Myka says. “You think I’m being obtuse.”

“Yes, I do,” Abigail tells her, and Myka is absurdly glad that Liam is such a smart boy, because she is pretty sure something heavy would be flying at her head right about now, in the absence of the ties. “Look. I knew that you and my sister would get along really well, on that trip and overall, and you did. You got along. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Almost never.”

Abigail pitches a shorter blue tie at her. “You and H.G. don’t get along.”

Myka catches it. She can’t think of anything to shape it into. “God knows that’s true. Except when we do.”

“Yeah. When you do, you oversleep in Pomona. You get busted.”

“Super-busted.”

“Now do you see what I’m saying?”

“I really don’t want to.”

“If you want to pretend to be all noble and say that you’re going to turn her down because of what happened with Violet and Paul, that’s up to you. You can do that. Clearly H.G. doesn’t want to _let_ you do that, but you do have a choice.” Now Abigail takes a stack of six-inchers and starts in on a series: the Greek alphabet in lowercase.

“I don’t feel like I do.” Myka likes this alphabet series, because at least she knows what’s coming next. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta.

“Well? So?”

“I called her an extortionist.” Myka fiddles with the blue tie.

“That is so sweet. You really should write Hallmark cards.”

“For forcing me to meet her kid.” Epsilon, zeta. Abigail has a little trouble with zeta, so Myka shapes the blue tie into a much better one and hands it to her.

Abigail makes a face. “And did she call you an insensitive jerk?”

“No. She kissed me.”

Eta. Theta’s another toughie; Abigail gives in and uses two ties. “I ask this with utter sincerity: what exactly does she see in you? It’s clearly not your personality, and I have to say I don’t remember Violet raving about your _technique_ or—”

“Stop talking,” Myka says. She drops her head into her hands, in the full knowledge that she’ll miss the making of iota and kappa—not that iota’s going to require Abigail to do anything more than pick up a tie and set it down again.

“Why? It’s the truth. She didn’t.”

Myka mumbles, “I’m already a tiny bit insecure in that department, so if you could please.”

“She didn’t say you were terrible!” This is said brightly, as if Myka were herself a five-year-old soccer player. Dribbling the wrong way down the field.

“Great news,” Myka says, and she looks up. Abigail is struggling again, this time with xi, which she throws aside in displeasure. She then takes a long pink tie and starts on something else entirely… so much for knowing what’s coming next. “Even greater news? That you were talking about this in the first place.”

“I didn’t say we were talking about it. I just said I don’t remember her raving or saying you were terrible.”

“That’s not even funny!” Myka complains.

“Maybe not to _you_.” Abigail holds up the pink tie. She has manipulated it into a shape that Myka can’t recognize. Myka shakes her head, and Abigail pouts. “It’s an anatomically correct heart!”

“I give up. Oh god and I’m supposed to cook them dinner and I haven’t even thought about what yet. I don’t know what I’m _doing_.”

“Annoying me and everybody else you know, except Pete, because I’m pretty sure he’s only ever thinking about the two of you getting it on.” She huffs, straightens out the heart tie, and shapes it into a triangle.

Myka drops her head again. “Please tell me that’s not true.”

“It is true.” Abigail nestles the triangle into Myka’s hair on the top of her head, like a crown. “You’ve been impossibly annoying lately.”

“The Pete part.” Myka tries to pull the triangle off, but it gets caught in a curl, so she yanks harder and tries to glare at the thing, but she can’t roll her eyes high enough to even see it. Abigail can laugh exactly like Muttley when she wants to: she does that now. “I’m telling every single one of your clients that you base your investments on what the Illuminati tell you to do,” Myka threatens.

Abigail snorts. “I bought everybody Apple at 60 before the split. Do you think my clients are going to care who told me to do that?”

“Be helpful, just once, and tell me what to feed them.”

“Food!” Abigail exclaims, seemingly sincerely, while shooting a rubber band through the triangle Myka _still_ can’t get out of her hair.  

****

Myka has been so nervous about what will happen on Saturday night that she hasn’t been able to bring herself to start thinking about what she will actually provide as the “food” Abigail recommended, so on Friday night she finds herself wandering the aisles of Ralph’s, desperately hoping for some inspiration… but nothing is happening. She _knew_ she shouldn’t have spent so much time sneaking around behind closed doors with Helena, at work in the afternoons; she should have read the entire _Gourmet_ website then instead. Or she should have read it in the evenings, when she’d gotten home and been too anxious to start planning, because settling on something would mean that it was all starting to be settled, that it was really happening, and obviously that was far too overwhelming.

She is thinking that she should have at least asked to see a picture of the kid, that maybe that would have given her some kick of an idea, plus she could have had some time to consider her as a person. All Myka knows, on her own recognizance, is that she’s nine, Steve is her dad, and there supposedly aren’t any foods she doesn’t like. That’s what Helena said, anyway, when Myka asked, though Myka is pretty sure she’ll manage to try to feed the kid the one esoteric thing she hates.

Helena had given Myka an opportunity to back out, too, in the course of that conversation: “We could just order pizza,” she’d said, “no, you like curry better. We could go to a restaurant. Or not actually do this at all, if you’ve reconsidered. Or if you want to reconsider.”  But Myka had assured her that no, no, she wasn’t going to reconsider. Helena hadn’t said anything in response, but her lips twitched, as if to begin a smile, and her mouth opened, just a bit. She breathed at Myka, and her face was such that Myka very nearly again forgot herself: “I love—” she began, but at the last second managed to change direction and say, “I love curry. How did you know I like it better than pizza?”

Helena closed her mouth. She curved it into the hinted-at smile. She said, “Claudia is a font of information regarding your preferences.”

“You asked her what I like?”

“I asked her about you, yes.”

“What kind of stalker _are_ you, anyway?” Myka demanded—it was meant to be a tease, but the smile left Helena’s face, and Myka knew she’d used the wrong tone, or—oh god, it was because before, at the very beginning, she’d accused Helena of stalking her, so of course she wouldn’t think it was funny, of course she’d be offended. So here Myka was again, getting it all wrong. What a surprise. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said immediately, but Helena was pulling away. Myka pulled her back again. “I _like_ that you asked. I _like_ that you wanted to know.” She smiled, hoping that Helena would again too. “Although I really do shudder at the idea of what Claudia knows about me. Or thinks she knows.”

Helena at least didn’t look as offended as she had before. She said, “She thinks that she knows your favorite color.”

“Did she say it was something exciting?” Myka asked, with great hope.

“She said you _wished_ it were something exciting, but that it is in fact blue.”

“It is,” Myka admitted. “It’s _so_ boring.”

“I think that depends on the shade.”

“Okay. Right now, it’s whatever shade your shirt is.” For Helena’s shirt was a slightly-darker-than-pastel blue, a baby-blanket blue that, as Myka ran her hands up the sleeves, over the shoulders and down to the lapels, shimmered just a bit.

“How… uninteresting,” Helena said. But her head tilted back in a way that seemed very much like an invitation for Myka to kiss her neck.

Myka smiled and delivered the kiss. “Then I’ve changed my mind. I don’t like the color of your shirt at all. It offends my eyes. I think you should take it off.”

“That’s much more interesting,” Helena said. “Unlikely, given that we are still in your office, but very interesting.” She pulled Myka to her for a kiss. In the kiss, Myka could feel that she had now been completely forgiven, and _zing!_ went the strings of her heart, and as far as preferences went, she didn’t like musicals much at all, but that description was exactly correct: the strings of her heart went _zing!_ , so whoever wrote those lyrics? Must have been in love just like this. 

And as far as preferences went: she realized, at the very end of the day, that she could ask Claudia if she knew anything about Christina. Claudia exclaimed, “The info I have for you!” She helpfully scribbled, and then handed over, a tiny post-it that read: “Science! Omaha!” This would no doubt be a great conversation-starter. “So, Christina,” Myka could say, “science. Also, I’ve heard, Omaha.”

Now, in the grocery store, Myka is wondering whether there might be a way to turn “science” and “Omaha” into a meal of some kind, so that Christina, whatever she looks like, will exclaim in some kind of delight. But what if she were to be delighted? What then? If she is delighted, if Myka somehow manages not to make a fool of herself… she genuinely does not know which of Abigail’s wrong/right outcomes she should hope for: being right about this being a bad idea? Or being wrong about that, the reward for which, as Abigail said, is getting to keep winking at Helena… but that would mean taking steps into a completely unknowable future. Obviously the future is always unknowable, certainly with regard to money, but for that kind of unknowability, there are hedges. FDIC-insured CDs, balanced portfolios, covered calls, inflation-protected securities. Even with such hedges, she deals with uncertainty all day long. She has never wanted to face more of the same when she left work. That was what she had liked about her relationship with Violet, if “relationship” had at any point even been the right word for it: she would see Violet, and Paul of course, when she went to New York, and that was all. The only uncertainty was how much taller Paul would be the next time she was there, and how much better he’d be at soccer. And then she would leave to come home, and here her apartment, here her _life_ , would still be, with nothing different, nothing disarranged.

It was ideal. And then Violet had to go and make it unideal, there on the sidelines of a soccer field, talking about how nice it would be if Myka moved to New York, and then she could go to _all_ of Paul’s soccer games. And Myka had laughed at the idea, but that had been to keep herself from telling Violet that it sounded and felt like a death sentence: _But what about my_ life, Myka thought, _my life, my actual_ life?

Laughing at someone when they say they want to be closer to you tends to make them change their minds about that very quickly. They tend to tell you to pack your stuff and leave right now. Myka tried to tell Paul goodbye in a way that would show that the past nearly two years (too long to have been selfish like that, far too long) hadn’t been… unimportant to her. But in trying to get her words exactly right, she made them stilted, hollow—and he cried, because he was only nine, and he had learned to be happy when she was around, and she was telling him he would not taste that flavor of happiness again. Part of her wanted to say “this is your mother’s fault”—but for all Myka was angry at Violet, she knew she had no real right to be angry at Violet, who was guilty only of wanting what she thought Myka wanted too, because Myka had been too willing to let her believe it… and Myka certainly had no right to take any of that out on Paul.

“You’re going to get so tall,” Myka finally said.

Paul shouted, through tears, “You don’t care!”

Myka did care—but not in the way she should have. In her fight with Violet, earlier, she had thought for a while that if she were a decent person, an unselfish person, she would make a decision to start trying to care that way. Looking at Paul, this older, angry, much-taller Paul, she knew that that would make none of them happy. After almost two years, she should not have had to _try_ to care differently, about Paul or about Violet. So she didn’t argue. She left.

The first trip she took to New York after that, she automatically recited Violet’s address as she climbed into a taxi at the airport; she didn’t even realize she’d done it until he stopped in front of the brownstone that housed the Chos’ apartment. Myka for a moment considered getting out of the cab, knocking on the door, and apologizing. Because if it was a reflex to come here, then maybe she did belong? Maybe this had happened for a reason? She sat for ten minutes in that cab, while its meter ran, thinking about pluses and minuses, tallying, sorting.

What it came down to was that while Myka did want to see them both, right then, she knew she would want just as much to get on a plane in three days and go home. And once she was home, she would think about them, but she would not miss them. She might have been able to talk herself into missing them… but she was selfish enough not to want to do that.

She told the cabdriver to take her to her hotel. And so it happened that three years later, after dashing out the door of that hotel into a dripping rain, she got into a cab with Helena Wells, whom she now misses when she is out of the _room_ , much less the city.

So now she is at Ralph’s on Friday night, wandering. Lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits. Kiwis. Mushrooms. Kale, collards, mustard greens. None of this looks like science or Omaha. Potatoes, pumpkins, onions, garlic…. wait. She remembers asking Helena if she turns into a pumpkin, and she tells herself in triumph, “Aha! A joke! We can have pumpkin soup or… something!”  Then she tells herself she is a fool, because “something” is not a triumph. But _then_ she turns her head and sees adorably small pumpkins— _not pumpkins_ , the sign above them reproves, _golden nugget squashes_ —so she looks that up on her phone, and there are some very impressive-looking things that can be done with adorably small pumpkins. _Golden nugget squashes, you idiot_ , say the four that have made their way into her basket, and Myka wonders if it’s a bad sign, sanity-wise, when the Curcubita start calling you names.

The good thing about Saturday, in the daytime at least, is that she can concentrate on cooking—not on whom she might be cooking _for_ , just the cooking itself. She puts on music, she pours wine, and if every now and then she is visited by the thought of Helena, her hands, her mouth, her perfect perfect body? That has to be okay, because if she can’t handle the thought, how is she going to be able to handle the reality?

As evening approaches, she winds herself up. She’s put the squashes in the oven, she’s made a salad, she’s got a full spectrum of ice creams in the freezer, and now there is nothing left to do but wait. She tries to read: reams of data that she for days has been too nervous to concentrate on need to be digested by Monday morning. Those reams will have to wait until tomorrow, obviously, because her hands shake as she holds the printouts. She tries just sitting still: that sends her into an agony of watching the second-hand on her wall clock as it ticks and ticks and ticks and she has counted to four hundred and twenty-seven before she makes herself stop. She stands up, walks around, shifts the placement of knickknacks that were already positioned just so… making sure the terracotta horse looks perfect from every possible angle does keep her occupied until the buzzer makes her jump, and she flies to the intercom and says “come up, come up!” in a voice that must sound far too overwrought.

She is bounce, bounce, bouncing on her toes—actually _bouncing_ , as if she were Pete—at the door, waiting for a knock, when she looks down at the toes she is bouncing on and sees her socks. Her orange socks, which she has not changed, because in her agitation, she has forgotten to change clothes. She is in the T-shirt and jeans she threw on to cook in, and the T-shirt is probably stained and the jeans are not the newer ones that fit her so much better, and she has not even put on shoes to cover her orange socks. _Shoes! For the love of god, at least put on shoes!_ she yells internally, and turns to dash for her closet and find some, but there is the knock, so there will be no shoes.

Myka opens the door to Helena (and the now-familiar brain-twitch of “oh, _there_ she is”) and, at last, Christina, who looks uncannily like Steve—well, no, she’s darker than her redheaded, freckle-faced father, but that’s definitely his face she’s wearing. When Christina smiles at Myka, though, the development of that smile shows that the way she moves her father’s face is pretty much all her mother. Because Helena’s features are undertaking the same slow-motion transformative steps from serious to bright.

Helena looks down at Myka’s feet, then up. Myka wants to explain everything, about love and terror and the unknowable future. Instead she says, “My floors are kind of cold.”

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People say words all the time, and we think we know what they mean. One of my points, here in this reversal, is to show that what Helena heard Myka say in the original Travel was not always, or even usually, what Myka thought she was saying, and vice versa.
> 
> ETA: The ground covered in this chapter also whizzes by in Travel's [chapter 18](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/6533690) through approximately the middle of chapter 20.

Flowers. Christina is holding flowers, but not just any flowers. _The_ flowers. Did Helena drive to San Bernardino and ask Ed to recreate the bouquet? If Helena had been holding them, looking at Myka through them, Myka would have had to kiss her; she would have had no choice at all. And that must be why Christina has them, why she is the one saying “these are for you.”

They are in her apartment. They are both in her apartment. The last time anyone stood in this apartment with Myka was… two years ago? Yes, when Claudia brought paperwork that Pete had accidentally scooped up off the printer along with several copies of his “top ten taco trucks” list. (His clients always ask him for an updated list, and he always obliges.) Myka had fully expected to resent, at least for the first little while of this unfamiliar invasion, the simple fact of it; she had expected to need time to process the presence of other people, to think her way around in it until she calmed down.

She was wrong. Her shoulders, which had been tense and square as a coat hanger, relaxed in the time it took her to carry the flowers from foyer to kitchen. Her socks are orange and dinner might be a failure anyway, but Helena is now standing in Myka’s kitchen, holding a wineglass, and Myka cannot cast her mind back to a time when that did not already mean that the world was in balance.

Christina is exploring like a cautious little herbivore in an unfamiliar forest. Myka wants to reassure her that it’s okay, nothing’s going to leap at her… she wants to say the same thing to Helena, who looks nearly as jumpy, but Myka supposes she herself has leapt at Helena enough times that it wouldn’t be a very plausible sort of reassurance. She doesn’t really want to leap at Helena right now, though; right now, she would be happy to hold her hand, kiss her cheek, speak low into her ear about flowers and gratitude, lift her mouth from that ear just enough to answer Christina when she asks a question…

Christina’s not afraid to talk to Myka, not at all afraid to ask her questions, and that seems good; plus her voice itself is interesting, mostly American, but her mother and, probably, her uncle are whispering within it, smoothing the edges of her consonants, broadening a vowel here and there. Now Myka’s glad she didn’t know what Christina looked like beforehand, for her face would have made Myka think she’d sound like Steve, too, and she would have felt a disconnect. Better to have met her all at once, with her Steve face making its Helena motions and her own voice being neither Steve nor Helena but Christina, a person to whom Myka can speak as Myka.

Regardless of what Abigail thinks about Myka and kids, there are kids whom Myka can’t abide: the ones who aren’t really _people_ , either because they haven’t gotten there yet or they won’t ever get there (and those tend to turn into the adults Myka can’t abide). Myka talks to kids like they’re fully formed. Her sister laughed at her for sitting next to her not-yet-one-year-old niece’s playpen and very seriously using the phrase “resource depletion” to explain why it was a bad idea to fling everything out of said playpen during the course of a tantrum. “But she understood!” Myka protested.

Tracy said, “She understood that you were looking at her and talking to her. She’s very into attention, particularly when she’s pitching a fit, so thanks a bunch for rewarding that behavior.”

“Well, she stopped throwing things, so I think we’re okay.”

“And then she pointed at her elephant and you went and got it for her, so _I_ think you pretty much undermined your lecture anyway.”

“She really wanted her elephant back,” Myka said weakly.

“Pushover.”

Myka had had to agree that maybe that was a little bit true.

What would Tracy make of Helena—Helena and now Christina, too? Would Helena like Tracy and Kevin and still-small (still elephant-loving) Audrey? And what about Christina? Does she like little kids; will she and Audrey get along? And Myka now feels a clank, another jangling slip of time’s chain, as her thinking changes involuntarily from the conditional to the real future, from “would” to “will,” but it’s unknowable, it’s unknowable, she has to remember that it’s unknowable, no matter how much she wants to take what is happening tonight and project it forward and believe, fully, that this is how the future, in its rightness, will feel.

It’s right to want to kiss Helena, as they stand there in the kitchen, but not be able to because Christina keeps asking questions. It’s right for Christina to bring Contango the stuffed giraffe into the kitchen, and for Myka to explain his name and watch both of their faces become confused in exactly the same way. (It _is_ ironic, no matter what anyone understands or doesn’t.)

It’s right for Christina to announce, nonchalantly, as they are eating dinner, “Mom can’t cook,” and then continue, in response to Myka’s questioning face, “like, at all.”

“I can boil water,” Helena protests.

“Mom. You know Uncle Charles says we’re all safer if you don’t use the stove. Particularly unsupervised.”

“I can use the microwave!”

“We have to buy a new microwave practically every six months because of you, so don’t act like you’re cleared to do much of anything in there, either,” Christina says. “I promise, Myka, she’s really smart about most stuff, but one time she was trying to steam kale and it caught on fire.”

“There was water in the steamer! Who would imagine anything could catch fire in such a damp environment?”

“You can have a campfire in the rainforest, Mom.”

This culinary-disaster characterization does not fully line up with Myka’s general experience of Helena, and she tells both of them so. Christina shrugs. “I think it’s something about the kitchen itself—she goes in there and loses her mind. _Almost_ literally.” Myka loves that Christina said “almost.” She also loves what Helena says next: “I suppose I could continue to argue, but Christina has the facts on her side. The kale did catch fire.”

“That part was a little bit awesome. But anyway, Myka,” Christina says, “what I’m saying is that you’re a way better cook.”

Myka says, “That praise seems a little faint, given that she’s a fire hazard. It makes me wonder whether it’s good news or bad news that I’ve just got ice cream for dessert, later. Do you have a favorite flavor?”

Christina nods, but she frowns. “I like vanilla but I know it’s boring. I wish I had a more exciting favorite.”

“If you want to expand your horizons,” says Myka, whose favorite color is of course the very boring blue, “I have options. Haagen Dazs has seven flavors that come in cups, so I bought two of each.”

“You don’t even like sugar,” Helena says. “Why on earth would you buy fourteen cups of ice cream?”

“You two might both like the same flavor. I had to cover my bases.”

Christina nods again, this time sagely. “That’s what I would do.”

“I mean thank god they have the cups,” Myka goes on, “because I can’t fit fourteen pints in my freezer. Well, I guess I wouldn’t need two of each then, but still, there are a lot more flavors in pints—twenty-four!—plus six more if you include the special artisanal kinds.”

“Thirty pints,” Helena says. “It does make fourteen cups sound like the reasonable, prudent option.”

Myka knows she’s being teased, and there is rightness in that, too.

It’s right and good, later, as they sit together, all three, and watch _The Philadelphia Story_ , to feel Helena relaxing against her side, relaxing enough to fall asleep, to breathe against Myka with a regularity that soothes. To have Christina argue quietly with her about the relative merits of Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn—the poor kid really is deluded, with her “musicals are better!” idea, but she’s seen a surprising number of movies and seems to be able to recall their finer points, which is helpful in arguments like the ones they’re having. “I do like Cary Grant in this,” Christina allows, softly so as not to wake her mother. “Bing Crosby is a little old for Grace Kelly. He’s funny in the ones with Bob Hope, though.”

“There’s one of those I really like,” Myka says. “ _Road to Utopia_. Robert Benchley narrates it; do you know who he is?” Christina shakes her head; Myka says, “Remind me later, and I’ll show you one of his short films. But yeah, Cary Grant is beautiful.”

This gets her an appraising look. “Does that mean you like boys too? I know you like my mom, but are you gay like she and Dad Steve are?”

“Um. I just think Cary Grant is pretty. I don’t want to date him. Or any other… boy. And right now, pretty much, only your mom. If it’s… are you okay with it? That I like your mom?”

“I met Liam this week,” Christina says, in what seems like a non sequitur.

“Liam’s a very good human being,” Myka says.

“So it’s weird to meet you too.”

“Oh. I get it. Both your mom and your dad.” Myka asks god to forgive her for what she’s about to say, but she can’t help herself. “So that’s unusual? For them to introduce you to people they like?”

“Mom had a girlfriend for a while. When I was little.”

“Oh?” Myka says. She hopes that no one has ever said “oh” as casually as she just has—and she hopes that her struggle to disguise her violent surge of jealousy will turn out to have been successful.

“Uncle Charles didn’t like her.”

“Did you like her?” And more importantly, she wants to add, did Helena like her? Although she must have, given that she was her girlfriend…

“I didn’t see her much. Only if she came to pick Mom up. But then she didn’t anymore, so I guess I never had a chance to find out if I liked her.”

“Do you like Liam?”

“I think so. He needs to read up on ancient Latin American art, though.”

Myka doesn’t know what that’s about, but she supposes it’s not a huge surprise that that’s not Liam’s area of expertise. “He probably thinks you need to read up on commodities ETFs.”

“I could do that and surprise him. Or would he like it more if I asked him what would be good to know?”

“I think he’d like it either way, but you’d probably get to know him better if you asked.”

“Do you think I need to get to know him better?”

“You should ask Steve that question. But what I think is, Liam really likes Steve.”

“And you really like Mom.”

Myka nods. Helena shifts a little in her sleep, nestling closer, and there is nothing Myka can do about that, timing-wise.

For some reason, this makes Christina alter her expression into something a bit less serious. “I don’t know _you_ very well yet,” she says.

“This is true. I don’t know you very well either. Vanilla ice cream and Grace Kelly. Oh, and tapdancing.” Myka considers asking about science and Omaha, but she is not feeling quite that confident yet.

“But Mom was really nervous on the way here, and now she’s asleep. How much do you know about calming signals?”

“Pardon?”

“When a dog thinks another dog is nervous or about to attack or whatever, it sends calming signals. Like, it yawns or it stretches, and then the other dog backs down. I’ve seen videos; it’s like magic. I think people do it too.”

Myka says, “Yawning and stretching? Yeah, I’m pretty sure people do yawn and stretch.”

She likes that this makes Christina clarify: “To calm other people _down_ , Myka. It probably isn’t even yawning and stretching for people, anyway.”

“Mostly what I’ve done so far is argue with you about movies. Then we talked about puking pumpkins… oh, and I just now annoyed your mom by using technology in ways that aren’t what she wants me to do, i.e., Twitter. I’m pretty sure none of that would be likely to be part of some set of instinctive behaviors that would calm her down.”

“I wish I could experiment on people,” Christina sighs.

“Aha,” Myka says. “Signed consent forms, right?” Because now the driveway in San Bernardino makes much more sense.

Christina nods gloomily. “Uncle Charles reminds me all the time.”

“You know, in the interest of your dataset, I was nervous when you got here, and I’m less nervous now. Maybe you’re the one who sent the signals to both your mom and me.”

“Or maybe somebody falling asleep on you is a calming signal,” Christina says, nodding at her mother.

Myka wants to explain that there is a strong sense in which that is less calming than incredibly arousing, but that is probably the wrong thing to say to a nine-year-old. So she says, “Were _you_ nervous?”

Christina makes a little noise of humming, thinking. “You mean before? Kind of.”

“Now?”

“Not really.”

“Okay,” Myka says. “Then maybe it wasn’t signals at all. Maybe it was something in the pumpkin.”

“Golden nugget squash,” Christina reminds her.

“Right. So possibly squash, quinoa, sausage, various dried fruits. Coriander, cardamom, et cetera. Any one, or in the particular combination. It got us all.”

“With salad. Or maybe it was just the salad!”

“Good point,” Myka concedes, because it is.

“Causes are tough. Because of correlation.”

“Most people don’t get that. Could I talk you into becoming a financial analyst?”

Christina cocks her head at the stack of reports Myka had pointed out earlier. “Would I write those?”

“Possibly.”

“Can I look at one later? Just to see?”

Myka tries not to chuckle, so as not to jostle Helena, as she says, “I don’t know; _can_ you?”

Christina mutters “not you too.” She sighs quietly—the sigh would be much louder if Helena were awake, Myka is sure—and turns her attention back to the movie.

Later, Myka is caught kissing Helena—caught by Christina, with her analytical eyes, like Myka has not got any of the appropriate signatures on the consent forms that would give her permission to kiss Christina’s mother. “ _She_ kissed _me_ ,” Myka is nearly moved to say, because she feels like she has to throw up some defense. That’s probably not the best one, though, so she just says “sorry” about a million times. But she is not truly sorry for kissing Helena, or for being kissed by Helena. She is sorry only for being caught—and then, only because there is some tension in Helena’s body over having been caught. Despite that, though, she stays in Myka’s arms. She stays and she doesn’t pull away. She stays and she melts further, as if she needs to show Myka that it is all right, that this is how they can be together, because this is how they _are_ together.

By the time Myka is sitting down in her foyer and reconciling herself to her fate—because jaguars can swim—she is thinking that she has never sat this way before, either here, physically, in the entryway to her apartment, or here, philosophically, because she is starting to believe that this _is_ her fate. Philosophically, she feels physically different, as if the evening has begun an inevitable process of developing a new hexis… epsilon, xi, iota, sigma… and she wonders now if she’ll ever again think any word of Greek origin without picturing it spelled out in bendable ties… and a second later, she thinks Christina would probably enjoy those ties, that she should ask Liam where he gets them, that wherever that is, she should go there and buy some. Or she should take Christina there, and they should buy some together, and Helena will be there too of course, holding Myka’s hand, saying something about Twitter or whatever she will be trying to talk Myka into next, and Myka will breathe into her ear to try to make her forget it, but she won’t, so Myka will think more about Twitter, as she is doing now, or whatever the next thing is, as she will be doing then.

And that thought is proof enough—although she needed no clearly defined statements of fact—that the configurations and placements of the three of them, in these hours, have shown, have created, a new disposition. Myka looks at Christina sitting next to her, at Helena standing over them. If Helena could come to believe it—though there is no guarantee that she could—but if she could, Myka might be able to believe it too.

It’s Myka’s life. But it’s pitching headlong into something else, unknowable, unrecognizable. It pitches further when Helena sends Christina into the hall, when she and Myka are alone. Myka tries to keep things light, but Helena is clearly in no mood for light. Myka had joked about meaningful sex earlier, she had _joked_ about it, but Helena’s hand that touches Myka is both a promise and a warning: watch what I can and will do, Myka. Watch, watch and feel, what I can and will do _to you_. Watch and feel the power I have _over you_.

Distance had given Myka power in her relationship with Violet: geographical distance, emotional distance. Myka’s position, where she put herself. She chose. And she can choose here, too. If she really wanted to, she could back away; she could start running. She doesn’t have to sit down, and fate… fate doesn’t make decisions. Fate nudges and encourages and has its own ideas, but it doesn’t make the real decisions. Myka is not powerless, and she has her own will, but she has been confused about where to direct that will, about whether she should want what she wants, which wants are worth wanting.

She could not have asked Helena to do what she is doing right now, in this incredibly brief episode of ecstasy. But she wants it. She wants everything that Helena is willing to give her, and as she bends against Helena’s hand, she knows that this is the want worth wanting. The only other want worth wanting, right now, is what she wants to give Helena in return, what she can’t give her in return, not tonight, but what she hopes she will soon have the opportunity—and the nerve, the necessary but elusive nerve—to do.

****

Myka is still standing in her foyer, stunned by how perfect Helena has again shown herself to be, how this is in some way exactly what she has been concerned about, _historically_ concerned about, because she has no defense at all against her, no emotional defense and certainly no physical defense, as her body just proved, to her extreme embarrassment but also even more extreme pleasure. Then her telephone rings—she _leaps_ for it, because what if it’s Helena, what if, maybe, she forgot something and needs to come back, what if Myka could just grab her and show her some echo of that want and power or, no, not that, because Christina would be there, but—and in her wild lunge for her phone, she knocks Contango off the table Christina left him on, and then she _trips_ over Contango, but she does get her hand on her phone, and she’s tempted to just say “please come back” into it. It’s good that she glances at the screen first, though, because it’s Artie. To say that’s a letdown is to call tsunami a drizzle… or to say Helena Wells is only _kind of_ good-looking.

Artie says, without preamble, “Success, finally!”

“Success at what?” Myka says.

“I’m so glad you asked! Because I can finally tell you!”

“Could you tell me tomorrow? Because it’s almost nine on Saturday night, and—”

“No, it’s almost _midnight_ on Saturday night.”

“You’re on the east coast?”

“Yes!”

He sounds absurdly gleeful, but Myka knows: “You don’t have any clients out there.”

“No, I don’t! What I do have is _victory_! Sweet victory, snatched at the last minute from the very jaws of defeat!”

“Artie, I’m tired. I’ve had kind of a rough week.” _Also I would like to sit here and think about the gorgeous woman who is changing everything._ Myka hugs Contango and tries not to think about the future, but she is thinking about the future. It’s a strange place, the future, full of arm wrestling and disagreements about movies, but she can also see Helena, still asleep against her on the sofa, her body substantial, soft…

Artie says, “Next week will be easier, I promise. Do you know why?”

“No.” _Because it won’t be easier; it’ll be so much harder, because all I’ll want to do is kiss her or talk to her or even just look at her, and it’s going to take so much effort not to…_

“Because those Chessboard people will finally be gone!” Myka’s blood stops moving, but Artie keeps talking: “As of right now, the contract is canceled, and they are _out_! I’m just glad I had you with me on this, because everybody knows you’re the star of our branch, and if you’re distracted by their nonsense? If you’re not on board with their _social media_ nonsense? Then why, I ask you, should anyone else be? Ah, Monday. Sounds like peace, doesn’t it?”

He says more words, but Myka doesn’t hear them, and finally she just hangs up, because she can’t hear any more. She can’t. She pulls up Helena’s number with shaking fingers and calls… but there is no answer. Myka is more disappointed with each ring, but all right, they’re driving, and it’s safer, and she wants them both to get home safely, but Helena’s going to be _so_ upset, and they’ll have to start figuring out right away how to fix the situation. So she leaves a voicemail telling Helena what happened—all she wants to say is “I love you and I will fix this no matter what,” but she can’t tell Helena she loves her; that would sound completely crazy. So she chokes out her message, trying to be as straightforward as she can, yet at the end, as she’s assuring Helena that they can fix it, that she doesn’t know how yet but she is sure, she comes perilously close to adding “and even if we can’t, I love you.”

She hangs up quickly, to stop herself. She leans back against the side of the sofa. Contango is still in her lap, and she realizes she’d forgotten how strangely soft his fake fur is… and that makes her grateful to Christina for bringing him out, for reminding her that he even exists. She’d started to look past a lot of things, not just Contango. So maybe… so maybe, all right, maybe it’s good that this astonishingly perfect woman, complete with apparently perfect daughter, has invaded. Maybe it’s better than good. Maybe it’s exactly right—maybe it really is perfect.

And it makes her think, with regard to Artie’s gloating call: this is a _joke_. Myka has an almost perfect night—the only way it could have been better is if she and Helena were in bed together right now—and Artie calls and turns everything into a disaster. This is a _joke_. He’ll call back and say he was joking and Myka will call Helena back and she’ll answer this time, and Myka will tell her that everything’s all right and Helena will say something simple like “I’m glad,” and maybe even “I’m glad you called,” and then this night won’t have ended yet, and it will keep on being perfect.

Artie doesn’t call back. Neither does Helena. Myka waits a while, then calls Jane. Jane is, naturally, appalled. Then, as Myka understands it when Jane calls her back later, it has turned into a phone tree, or at least a communication tree of some sort: Jane calls Pete, who calls Abigail, who calls Liam, who is with Steve, who calls Mr. Caturanga, the head of Chessboard. The only person no one can reach is Helena. Myka calls again, then tries a third time. She gets voicemail, and she tries again to explain, tries to sound less than pathetic as she asks Helena to please call her. Helena never calls Myka back.

For a while, nothing happens, and Myka, who can’t think of anyone else to call, falls asleep. She wakes up after a disorientingly short time, surprised to find herself on the floor with her head pillowed on Contango and her phone singing out its ringtone right in front of her face. It’s Jane again, saying that she’s spoken to Mrs. Frederic, the CEO of Warehouse Finance, but Mrs. Frederic isn’t fully convinced that Artie is wrong, and Myka should probably think about getting on a plane and making a case of her own, in person. Another call: Steve, who reports that he’s called Helena’s brother, who said (once he got over being awakened very early on a Sunday morning) that Helena is alive and that she and Myka had some kind of disagreement. And that’s all he said, Steve says. Myka is baffled. “Disagreement about what?”

Steve says, “It’s H.G. It could be anything. Did you and Christina not get along?”

“We got along fine! She’s really great, by the way. Opinionated, but great.”

“Thanks. I think she’s pretty great too. Opinionated, yeah, but you see who her mother is… I bet you said something you thought was totally innocuous and H.G. decided to flip out about it. Did she seem upset when she left? There’s usually some kind of warning sign.”

“When she left,” Myka says. She can’t believe that someone who would do that, who would be moved to put her hands on Myka and bring her such joy, could possibly have been so upset as to be ready to stop speaking to her. “She seemed… I thought everything was good. I thought everything was perfect.”

“Well, maybe she happened to glance at her Twitter feed and it reminded her to blame you for the whole situation.”

“I left her a message! I told her we’d fix it!”

“Again, it’s H.G. She’s my best friend in the world, but Myka, she is a total loon. Brilliant, I mean that’s obvious, but there is honestly no telling what’s going on in that head of hers. She’s had to tone it down a little, because of Christina, but still.” Then Steve says, “I think we should both go talk to Caturanga.” So Myka and Steve go talk to Caturanga over a very early breakfast—which for some reason he practically has them drive down to _San Diego_ for. He is a bizarrely mesmerizing person, and breakfast starts off as a Socratic question-and-answer session but eventually turns into a monologue about the Warehouse and money and the future and the past and connections and everyone’s part in everything. Myka drinks too much coffee and absently eats not one, not two, but three doughnuts, which is more sugar than she’s eaten in one sitting in _years_ , so her wires are coiled tighter than any spring. That’s why she says, when Steve volunteers to go and find out what’s wrong with Helena, “I’ll do it.” She and Helena got everyone into this mess, she figures; they should get them out of it. Plan A, as worked out by Myka and Steve, is that Myka and Helena will go and convince Mrs. Frederic that Chessboard is doing valuable work. (Myka is still somewhat unclear on how Caturanga managed to persuade her that this is so; she thinks it’s related to whatever subtle coercion he exercised that led her to eat so many doughnuts. Anyway, it’s just… the case.) Plan B is that Myka and Steve will go to New York.

“I’ll pack my bags,” Steve says resignedly.

“Seriously, what makes you think it’ll come to Plan B?” Myka asks him.

“Seriously? If she’s not talking to anybody… look, speaking of B. One time in grad school she decided she was going to learn to read Linear B. So she locked herself in her apartment and didn’t talk to anybody until she’d learned to read Linear B.”

“Why?”

Steve sighs. “The only possible answer to that is: because she’s H.G. I mean, it turns out it gave her an idea for this really knotty development problem—it was literally knotty; we were working, mathematically speaking, on knots—but I’m pretty sure she didn’t know beforehand that things would work out that way.”

This makes Myka laugh. Nothing else this morning really has. “So what you’re really saying is that your kid comes by her whole deal honestly.”

Steve laughs back. “Anything normal about that kid is thanks to me. Well, and Charles. He’s kind of a nut too, but he’s a more normal kind. Like an almond. But H.G.’s the kind of nut that grows on some tree that’s found only on a remote Sumatran mountain and flowers only once every thousand years, and then only when it’s the Age of Aquarius. Or something.”

“Every last one of you people is a space alien pretending to be human and failing miserably,” Myka declares. “I used to have a normal life, and now I’m about to drive to Encino.”

“I told you, I’ll do it.”

“Oh no. Absolutely not. Now I’m angry.” She _is_ angry now, angry that someone with whom she’d had such a perfect night would turn around and ignore her. Would turn around and ignore _everybody_ , even Steve, whose fault this obviously isn’t.

And of course she is even more angry after she spends two hours yelling at other drivers on the freeway, so by the time she reaches Helena’s house, she is overcaffeinated, sugar-crashing, stressed beyond belief, and ready to _break Helena in two_.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags: such nutters these nuts are, and also Christina, I can't help but dig that kid regardless of AU


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: The events in this chapter take place, in Travel, from about the middle of [chapter 20](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/6758783) through the middle of chapter 21.

Myka pulls up at the house—okay, fine, so it’s a nice house—thinking maybe she can lean on the horn until Helena wakes up, if she’s not awake, and maybe then that infuriating woman will at _that_ point stoop to respond to people who are stupid enough to want to _help her_.

No… that wouldn’t be fair to Helena’s neighbors, who don’t have anything to do with this. Probably. Right now, Myka is genuinely unsure who, other than Helena, and also Artie, is really to blame for any of it—no, she _knows_ that whoever was driving that white SUV is absolutely to blame for cutting her off not once, not twice or even thrice, but _four_ different times. Stupid tourists. _I want this exit!_ then five seconds later _I actually want the next one! or maybe the one after that!_ If there hadn’t been children in the rear seats, Myka would have been sorely tempted to… well, she wouldn’t have done anything, not really, except what she did do: sit in her car and swear incompetently at that driver and every single other idiot on the road. (She wishes Tracy had been in the car with her, because Tracy can swear magnificently. Myka always tells people that Tracy swears like a sailor, but then again she’s never actually heard a sailor swear, so it seems like a white lie that is probably unfair to Tracy anyway, because she swears like the average sailor most likely _wishes_ he or she could.) Actually, maybe it’s California’s fault: _roads!_ the stupid state probably thought, _for transportation and commerce!_ But you start building roads, and suddenly they’re bumper-to-bumper with idiots.

You start building roads, and suddenly they go all the way to _Encino_ and you are _driving there_ and pulling up in front of a house and yelling, “Helena Wells, get out here!”

And what kind of tree nut says some calm little “Hello Myka” to somebody who’s just driven all the way to _Encino_ to fix a situation that she never wanted to be involved in to start out with? What kind of Age of Aquarius nut from the Sumatran mountains _says_ that?

The idea of wrapping her hands around Helena’s neck is _very appealing_. But all right, maybe not in front of Christina, who, Myka realizes at a certain point, is watching—those analytical eyes again—or this man with really astonishing facial hair who is obviously Charles. No, murder in front of family members is probably a bad idea. Myka settles for yelling some more, in response to which Helena has the gall to look _confused_.

It turns out to be very very fortunate that Christina is not only present but also a contributor to the conversation, because Myka is reasonably certain that in Christina’s absence she would have kept on yelling for days. _Days_. First Helena’s confused, then she shows that she has _no listening comprehension skills whatsoever_ , and _then_ she basically says that even if she did have listening skills it wouldn’t have mattered because she didn’t bother to listen to Myka’s message. Because she was hurt. _Hurt_. As if she is the only person involved in this whole disaster, as if her feelings matter more than anyone else’s, as if Myka herself doesn’t have feelings that might be hurt in the event of being _completely ignored_?

Myka had no idea she could be angry at Helena, not like this. It’s revelatory: it doesn’t grant her freedom from the thrall she’s been under, not quite, and that’s fine, because she doesn’t truly want to be free of that; she wants to keep on asking herself _how is she real?_ But it is as if the anger, in its justified validity, is sporting one of Claudia’s post-it flags, one whose color matches that of Myka’s other involuntary response to Helena, that strange, sinking familiarity of “oh, _there_ she is.” They are to be filed together, the anger and the relief, for they are both more frightening and more comforting than dumbstruck awe could ever be.

And at a certain point Myka finds herself, thanks to Christina, giving up and sitting down again. At that point, with Christina asking Myka if she is reconciling herself to her fate, Myka is doing exactly that. Her anger is dropping away, piece by piece, like armor, and of course it was protective, as if she had always known that because of caffeine and sugar and sleep deprivation and a white SUV on the freeway she would forget herself and say the word “love,” just throw it into the air, use it because it’s true, say it without thought of how it would be received. Say it and not override it, withdraw it, disavow it. Just let it be part of the things that she says: “I must really love you or something.”

Yes, she’d driven into this driveway ready to break Helena in two. Now she is sitting quietly in this driveway with Helena beside her, and they both seem to be reconciling themselves to, at the very least, their shared view of the garage door. Myka thinks of saying something like, “If your garage door didn’t look so much like barn doors it would be more attractive.” Maybe followed by, “But it’s very well maintained; I don’t see any paint peeling anywhere.” What she is most interested in, though, is the answer to a question she cannot ask without rendering the asking pointless: “Are you aware that I just told you I love you?” To be followed swiftly, pointless or not, by “Is there any possibility you might feel the same?”

Maybe it’s Myka’s reward for letting go of her concern for what Helena will think; maybe it’s just an alignment of planets and stars and fate and memory and a rare nut, but:

Helena is aware.

And there is every possibility that she might feel the same.

It’s something about driveways, Myka is thinking as they fall into each other. Driveways and consent forms and garage doors and all the other things that are never going to be the same or even sound the same: the small noise of pleasure that Helena makes when Myka kisses her. The slight “whuff” of Myka’s breath leaving her lungs as Helena pushes her onto her back to kiss her more thoroughly. The roar of someone’s lawnmower, down the street, because it is Sunday morning _in Encino_.

“You have neighbors,” Myka tries to say. “You have neighbors and if they see—”

“See what?” Helena asks. “See us? I hope they see us. It’s about time they started envying me, instead of pitying me for my poor gardening skills.”

“Envying you?” For being attacked in her driveway by some gangly sweatshirted klutz—

“Who wouldn’t envy me? Just look at you. Oh, god, _look_ at you.”

****

From Helena’s sofa, with Christina still giving her driveway-begraveled sweatshirt a skeptical eye, Myka calls Steve. She tells him that everything’s fine.

“Really?” he asks, with surprise that sounds quite genuine. “And everybody’s still breathing?”

“So far,” Myka says. “I’ve still got to get Helena to New York and back, but I certainly feel better about that than I did earlier this morning. Incidentally, does Caturanga make everybody eat doughnuts?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s never made me eat a doughnut. He did hand me a cup of very freaky tea, years ago, and that might have been what turned me into a Buddhist. Cause and effect can get a little iffy around him.”

“Buddhism,” Myka says, then, “Encino.” She asks Steve, “Do you mind if I tell you ‘Namaste’? I think it fits today. You knew what we needed to do.”

“I’ll accept that with thanks,” Steve says. “Keep it together in New York, and don’t kill H.G.”

“I can’t predict whether that’ll be necessary. I would have to give you odds,” Myka says, and he laughs.

Christina says, “Tell Dad Steve that if we were betting, I would already have won the over/under on the Broncos game.”  
  
Myka obeys. Then she says to Christina, “Omaha. I get it now. Remind me to ask you about science later.”

“I really really like Peyton,” Christina says, “but if I were a quarterback, I’d want a different word.”

“How about ‘Lincoln’?” Myka suggests. “It’s the only other place in Nebraska I’ve heard of.”

“Needs more vowels.”

“Lincolnesque,” Myka offers, and Christina and Charles each make a “mf!” noise that might be mirth, appreciation, or dismissal. Or all three at once.

“Tell her she should yell ‘Namaste!’” Steve says. “Just imagine: ‘Namaste! Banana Five Hook Star T-bird! Namaste! Eighty-six! Namaste! Hut hut!’ The irony alone, honestly.”

Myka repeats this sequence to Christina, as well as Steve’s comment about irony. Christina, unfazed, says, “I don’t understand irony. It’d make more sense to yell ‘samsara,’ because you always want to get another first down.”

“Now I don’t understand,” Myka admits.

“Continual rebirth,” Christina says.

“Space aliens,” Myka tells Steve. “ _Failing miserably_.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go to Encino.”

“ _Wanted_ to go to Encino? No, I’m the one who… well…” She can’t honestly dispute it, though what she really _wanted_ , throughout the night and the morning and even the drive, was to go to wherever Helena was. And that was Encino, so… she sighs. “Would you bring Jane and rest of the crowd up to date? And tell Claudia I mean it, she can stay home tomorrow if she wants to.”

“Will do. Tell H.G. to act like an adult.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like it means. Sometimes she needs to be reminded.”

“That’s pretty good advice for most of us.”

“Yeah. Christina’s usually the only one who doesn’t need to be reminded.”

“Failing miserably,” Myka says again, and Steve laughs and hangs up.

Myka, Christina, and Charles, in their line on the sofa, focus on the television. Somebody scores a touchdown, and Charles says to Christina, “Steve’s fantasy football situation is certainly taking a beating.”

“Mine’s all right,” Christina says. She asks Myka, “Do you like the Broncos?”

“I’m fine with the Broncos.”

“But who do you _like_?”

“I’m not the biggest football fan,” Myka tells her.

Christina regroups. “Okay, where are you _from_?”

“Right now I’m from L.A.” But Myka can tell exactly where this is going to end up…

“That doesn’t help,” Christina grumbles. “We don’t have a team here. Mom was really stupid to move from a place that has two teams to a place that has none. Are you from here for real?”

“No. I’m from Colorado Springs.”

And it does end up there: Christina gasps, “So Denver really is your team!”

“I guess. But again, I’m not the biggest fan, so—”

“At least now you have a team. One that didn’t move to St. Louis like the Rams did.”

“I have to say, if ‘my’ team were to move to St. Louis like the Rams did… the St. Louis Broncos sound more like roller derby than football.”

“I don’t know roller derby.”

“I’ll take you sometime,” Myka says, and if she is making wild assumptions about what life will be like, going forward? She will just have to keep on making them. “Girls on roller skates trying to knock each other down.”

“I like it already!”

Charles laughs and says, “I suddenly find myself quite looking forward to the future. And Helena’s indignant response to it.”

“Don’t listen to him, Myka. Mom might _pretend_ not to like it if it’s violent, but—”

“No, it’s fine if she doesn’t like it. She’s pretty cute when she’s indignant. Actually she’s pretty cute most of the time.”

“Mom isn’t cute.”

“She approximated it when she was very small,” Charles says. “Then, alas, she grew up.”

Myka can’t help but grin at him, over Christina’s head. “You’ll forgive me for having a more… appreciative perspective on that.”

Charles crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows, which are nearly as dramatic as his moustache. “I beg your pardon. We are talking about my sister.”

Myka is pretty sure he’s just giving her a hard time, but: “Oh look!” she exclaims. “A football game!”

“It’s a commercial,” Christina says.

“Story of my life.”

Christina, with no play unfolding in front of her, clearly needs something to hold her attention. She demands, “Are you on Twitter yet like Mom wants you to be?” Myka has to admit that she is not, and Christina sighs. “You had all night and all morning and it takes five minutes. What were you doing all that time?”

“I wish I could say I was sleeping,” Myka says, “but your mom kind of made that impossible.” From the other end of the sofa, she hears a smothered chuckle from Charles. “Oh, right, Mr. I Beg Your Pardon.” She sighs and looks at her phone. “So how do I do this Twitter thing, anyway?”

Christina seizes the phone. “It’ll be much faster if I do it for you.” Myka has to agree, given how tired she is. They discuss the particulars: Christina pronounces the required “@MykaBeringWHF” boring, and Myka has to agree with that, too. “We can make you that one _and_ a fun one,” Christina assures her. “You could be @Contango!”

“Let’s save that for next time. Hurry up and finish before your mom gets out here.”

“Is it a surprise?”

“Maybe. Sometimes it’s nice to have something in your back pocket.”

Charles pipes up, “For dealing with Helena, I recommend something shiny. She’s easily distracted.”

“Nanny Charles, you are crazy. This is Mom we’re talking about.” Then she yells, “Watch the corner!” It takes Myka a second to realize that this isn’t emphatically expressed advice about how to deal with Helena. No, Peyton had been about to throw an interception, which he managed to avoid by heeding Christina. Who, Myka thinks as her ears ring, was probably loud enough to be heard in Denver.

“Hm,” Charles says. “I suppose I meant, a shiny new problem to sink her teeth into. She’ll come back around to the original issue, of course, but at least you’ll have had time to regroup.”

Shiny new problems. Myka is pretty sure she will have no difficulty providing Helena with new problems, not if history is any indication… yet in the next moment, she isn’t thinking about problems anymore, because Helena is emerging from the hallway with a small suitcase in tow, and Myka is asking her, “Are you ready?” As soon as the question leaves her mouth, she knows it is about more than the flight and the trip and even Warehouse: but it’s all right, because Helena is smiling and saying yes.

****

The drive to the airport finds both of them shy—they have said things that are huge, and Myka doesn’t know about Helena, but she herself hasn’t said words of love to anyone since she was young and foolish and had no idea what those words might mean. Now she would like to know what the smaller words that follow are supposed to be. At a certain point, however, Helena, with no fanfare, reaches her hand over to be held, and Myka takes it. She raises it to her mouth and kisses it, then says, as if they have been carrying on a conversation the whole time, “So Charles says you were cute when you were little.”

“My brother never said such a thing.”

“He said you approximated it.”

“That sounds more like him. Note that I am not asking how this subject came up.”

“Roller derby,” Myka says.

“Is this a game in which we say random phrases? If so, my response is vodka martini.”

“Your response to roller derby is vodka martini?”

“Well, I’m sure I’d need one, in the event.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. You know, I like this game. My response to vodka martini is… Chevy Camaro.”

Helena raises her eyebrows. They’re far more elegant than her brother’s are. “Your response to drinking is driving?”

“Vodka reminds me of high-test fuel. Your turn.”

“I don’t know cars.”

“You don’t have to know cars. What do cars make you _think of?_ ”

“Kissing you.”

The unexpectedness of this makes Myka involuntarily tighten her grip on both Helena’s hand and the steering wheel, which in turn makes the car swerve, not terribly dramatically, but enough for it to whump-whump its way over a few reflective lane markers. “So what cars really make you think of is _me crashing mine_. Seriously, why would you say that?”

Helena says, with a laugh and a shrug, “You did ask.”

At the airport, in the parking garage—and “parking garage” is the phrase that would have prompted Myka, and probably will forever prompt her, to think of kissing Helena—they reinforce both their associations by staying in the car for… well, not _too_ long, Myka tries to tell herself. Not too very long, and she had tried to ready herself to resist the urge, but as soon as they stopped, Helena had put a hand on Myka’s arm and said, “I would have ruined it all, and you didn’t let me. Thank you.”

Myka smiled. “ _You_ didn’t let _me_ , before, you with your Lysistrata campaign. It was my turn to fix things. And we’ll see how well that goes, anyway—we’re not even on a plane yet.”

“I think it’s going extremely well so far,” Helena said, and she proceeded to pull Myka close, as close as she could in the car, and kiss her the same way she did in the driveway: a slight initial hesitation, followed by a freefall into joy.

Not twenty-four hours have passed since Helena and Christina appeared at Myka’s door. Not even twenty-four hours. But that’s the future for you… sometimes it takes forever to show up, and sometimes there it is, right there, making you go to Encino and change every plan and taste so much promise in one kiss in an airport parking garage that you for a brief moment consider saying “Our flights are taking us to New York and I’ve heard that there’s a place in New York called Niagara Falls that traditionally has something to do with honeymoons.”

And really, if you are now having to hustle your way through security because of that not too very long time the two of you spent in the car? Well, who wouldn’t rather kiss Helena Wells, and think about honeymoons, than meander through an airport anyway?

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags: sorry about the relative brevity, but I was so happy to get at least a little more swing to the dialogue, anyway I like it when they're swoony for each other, even though in Travel it took Helena a while to find out how swoony Myka was for her, and here it's taking Myka just as long to find out how Helena feels, they are so dense, I just want to hit somebody in the head, oops, spoilers


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As god is my witness, I didn’t know there was going to be so much damn dialogue, but they start _talking_ , and I think about them talking, and I never want them to stop talking. It’s like I’m some oblivious jazz musician whose improvisations just keep going and going… and then I think “Oops, better swing back to the melody at some point. It sounds like I totally planned it this way, right?” Yeah, no.
> 
> ETA: Aaand this portion of the story also occurs in Travel's [chapter 21](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/6805982), or rather more accurately starts in the middle of that chapter and runs through chapter 23.

On the flight from L.A. to Philadelphia, they talk about the future—although to Myka’s… disappointment? relief?… it is not their shared future that is under discussion, but the future of money and its management. But when their dinner is served, they take a break. “We should go somewhere on a boat,” Myka tells Helena. “Or a train.”

Helena looks skeptically at Myka, then at the food. “Train, please. I’m not fond of boats. And why should we?”

“It’s always cars and planes with us. We should switch it up. Why don’t you like boats?” Myka takes an experimental bite of the “chicken” option, which they both chose. “I should bear in mind that special meals are always better. Have you ever had vegetarian on British Airways?”

“No. Because I have never flown on British Airways, because Charles and I came to America on a boat. Hence the dislike.”

“You dislike boats because one brought you to America?”

“I dislike boats because I was continually seasick on the one that brought me to America.” She’s now looking at the plate as if it’s a cousin of that boat.

“You poor thing. Did Charles get sick?”

Helena stabs at the chicken. “He did not. He was so very smug.”

Myka has no trouble understanding that stab as meant for Charles; she herself doesn’t get seasick and would prefer to remain unstabbed, so she resigns herself to a boatless future. It isn’t a tragedy. “I’m not one of those people who’s itching to head out to Catalina every weekend, if you were worried about that.”

“I was not in fact worried about that,” Helena says.

“Good. Don’t be. I might actually look into the train thing though.”

Helena gives up on the chicken. She drapes her napkin over it. “I think you should look into becoming an airline chef. At this moment, I would kill for one of those pumpkins you made last night.”

“Golden nugget squash.”

“You are worse than Christina,” Helena pronounces. She scowls down at her linen-covered plate. Myka wordlessly takes the energy bar that she had earlier placed in her own seat pocket and hands it over; Helena seizes it, with a surprised smile so bright that Myka thinks her own retinas might now be damaged.

****

Helena calls home from the Philadelphia airport. She talks to Christina, and then Myka talks to Christina.

Every time Myka talks to Christina, she feels like she has always been talking to Christina, like she has always felt this amused exhaustion, relaxed yet on her toes, and it’s an echo of how Helena makes her feel, which should just be logical—like mother like daughter, right?—but seems exceptional instead. Every time she talks to Christina, she feels closer to Helena, and now vice versa, and that had of course been what she was afraid of, because if something goes wrong? If something goes wrong, which it still so easily might, the thought of trying to explain and apologize to Christina, even now… “Sorry, honey. I blew it with your mom. No roller derby. No Omaha. No rat pups, no _Bringing Up Baby_ , no nothing. Did I make you think I cared? Did I make you think I could have loved you both, that I’d already started to love you both more than anything? Yeah, sorry, that’s on me. Go ahead and start hating me now.” The idea of Christina hating her is nearly as painful as the idea of Helena hating her.

****

Flying from Philadephia to New York takes only about an hour. Whatever adrenaline Myka might have been running on is long gone, and she is trying to work out the pros and cons of a nap at this point… pros include possibly being more awake when they get to the hotel, but that could be a con too, because awake means not asleep, so maybe it would be better to get there and _literally_ pass out—“Sorry I passed out,” she could say the next morning, “but I was really tired, because as you know, I didn’t sleep on the plane. Either plane. That we were on, earlier. Those planes…”

So, okay, wake up. She looks over at Helena, who is paging through the airline magazine. “Anything interesting?” Myka asks.

“Not unless you wish to be made aware of the best steakhouses in the nation. Or look at photographs of snowboarders in picturesque locales. The ads are extensive as well: perhaps you’re looking to hire a motivational speaker or a lawyer. Or additional consulting services.”

“I can’t imagine wanting another consultant. Or her… services.” Myka laughs as Helena’s eyebrows rise. “No, but seriously. I can’t imagine it. I knew you were smart, that’s always been clear, but I have to confess I didn’t fully get it. I mean how you want to say things to Mrs. Frederic. I was pretty much convinced before, but now I’m actually really on board.”

Helena smiles. “Thank you. I do have numbers on my side, though I wonder how persuasive we can reasonably expect to be, given the willingness of people at your corporate offices to believe that Steve and I are criminals.”

“You’re the prettiest, smartest criminal I ever met,” Myka declares. “Steve’s smart too, but he’s nowhere near as pretty. It’s going to be fine. In fact, I’m so sure it’s going to be fine, I’ll make you a bet to that effect.”

“Will you? At least we aren’t playing poker. Speaking of criminals, how _did_ you get yourself thrown out of a casino?”

Myka waves her hands as dismissively as she can. It really had been one of the worst moments of her life up to that point: the tap on her shoulder, the _come with me please ma’am_ , the terse accusations, and then at the end of it all, the oh-so-discreet shove toward the door. Eight years ago this happened, and in the intervening time she has made, still makes, as much light of it as she can, because eventually that scab of _having done something very wrong_ has to disappear. It has to. “Counting cards, they said. I guess it upsets casinos when you can actually keep track of what’s happened in the past. And apparently I wasn’t playing like a gambler.”

“You were playing instead like….?”

“Someone who knew what would happen. Because I don’t take unnecessary risks.”

Myka feels her hand being taken; this time it’s Helena who raises their joined hands to her lips. “I obviously wouldn’t have grounds to throw you out.”

“Of your casino?”

“If I had one. You took the risk of driving on the 405 earlier today.”

“Well,” Myka says, though the idea of Helena _not_ throwing her out is warming. “Doughnuts.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“I didn’t tell you that part? See, what happened was… you know what? I think I’ll make your friend Caturanga tell you. Then you can explain it to me, okay?” And maybe Helena is the only one who could explain it. Doughnuts. Myka tries not to even be aware of the presence of doughnuts in the world, even when Pete walks a platter of Krispy Kremes back and forth in front of her office door just to get her goat. Which has happened more than once. “I have got to tell Pete to knock that off,” she says. Out loud?

Yes, out loud, because Helena asks, “Are you feeling entirely well?”

“Honestly? Yes and no.”

Helena looks pained. “I know it’s my fault. I’m still very sorry.”

“I told you, and you really should listen this time: it’s _our_ fault. I’m sorry too. I’m so sorry, in fact, that here’s the bet: if you and Steve aren’t back at Warehouse on Tuesday, I’ll start wearing Chessboard gear to work. Every day. You’ve got T-shirts or something, right? Hats?”

“That is incredibly silly.” But Helena smiles.

“Plus I’ll get some antique chess sets for my office, so every time Artie comes in, he’ll be reminded of what he did.”

“You’ll end up fired too.”

“I really won’t.” Myka is quite sure of this; she’s done nothing wrong, and she really is the star of the branch. Artie would have to look long and hard to find a reason even to move her to a smaller office, much less to fire her. “And anyway, you should look on the bright side: it isn’t going to come to that, because it’s going to go fine.”

“And what’s your prize if it does?” Helena asks.

Myka smiles now. “I get to keep kissing you.”

“You’ll stop otherwise?”

Was that a geniune question? “God no. At least, I hope not. It’ll just… you wouldn’t be around, particularly in the afternoons. It would be more difficult.”

“Everything will be more difficult,” Helena says.

That statement worries Myka more than she wants to admit, because everything has already been so very difficult… the idea of the situation becoming worse instead of better is itself difficult to face. “Let’s deal with that if it happens. But remember, I’ll be wearing a Chessboard T-shirt if it does.”

“I don’t think we do have T-shirts. I’ll have to have some made specially for you.”

“I bet that magazine right there has an ad or two for that kind of thing, but it isn’t going to be an issue. You know what, though, I’m pretty sure Claudia would tell you that you really need T-shirts anyway.”

Helena nods. “She already has, but not Chessboard. Team Bering and Wells.”

“What?” She can’t have heard right. But then again it’s Claudia, who’s been playing Our Lady Cupid of the Post-Its the entire time, so of course. Of course.

“Ask Claudia to explain it, Ms. Bering.”

“I think I get it, Ms. Wells. It sounds like a pretty good team.”

They keep holding hands. Myka, unable to keep her mind on whatever very good reason she must have had for staying awake, crashes into a fifteen-minute nap and wakes up right before landing. She is completely disoriented but also fully, sharply alert.

****

Myka’s energy ebbs and flows as they move through the airport, into a cab—which actually is funny; she would have to be far more unsettled than she is to miss that significance. So they laugh a little, and Myka relaxes a little, but then they are in the hotel. _Two rooms_ , Myka thinks wildly, _I should have kept the second room, said I was tired, escaped…_ When, in the elevator, Helena kisses Myka’s cheek and Myka feels nothing, she thinks it must be that her subconscious is trying to save her from the temptation to make a fool of herself. She’d been fine with looking like the lovestruck sap she is in the driveway, in the airport, on the plane, but things could go only so far in any of those spaces. Now the elevator’s floor numbers, illuminating one by one, are a weirdly reversed doomsday-clock countup, leading to a space and circumstance in which she is very likely to show herself as just such a fool.

The elevator dings, and there they are: down the hall, into the room, and she is in a room alone with this beautiful woman, with the _only_ beautiful woman, and yet she is here and her desire is somewhere _else_ , over _there_ , somewhere she can’t _get to_.

And Helena thinks it’s her fault. Myka can’t find the words to explain the extent to which nothing about this is Helena’s fault, the extent to which Helena has done everything right… except of course for the little listening-comprehension incident earlier today… was that even today? It feels now like a hiccup, a brief suspension of the inevitable—but it _isn’t_ inevitable, because Myka _will_ blow it, she will lie down on this bed and Helena will emerge from the bathroom and say “I’ve rethought.”

Instead, Helena lies down beside Myka. And in that moment, the bed is like a driveway, or an airport, or a plane: safe, a place to be in love, a place to say words that are true, to just say them without worrying about a response.

So Myka finds herself telling Helena the truth about Violet and Paul and the huge, unpardonable mistakes she made with them.

Myka has no idea what kind of response she might get, but what she does get is confounding: Helena is jealous. It is horrifying, stirring. Myka’s impulse, though she can’t bring herself to act on it, is to grab Helena and kiss her covetous mouth—because she is coveting _Myka_ , and that is incomprehensible yet amazing—have her _now_ , take her _wildly_ , show her the _difference_ —but Helena wouldn’t know it as difference. She wouldn’t understand that whatever has overtaken Myka now, with her, even if Myka is terrified of acting on it—no, _because_ Myka is terrified of acting on it—is _distinctive_. Helena is the one who drives her crazy, the one who makes it all different, the one who sends Myka’s nerve yelping for cover, then brings it back again.

Myka has always preferred low risk, guaranteed returns; she has never put more in play than she could afford to lose. She’d made the first move with Violet. Low risk, guaranteed returns. She’d said, late one night in the bar of a hotel in Shanghai, “I think you like me.” She’d touched the inside of Violet’s wrist, watched her dark brown eyes soften into blackness, then leaned in and kissed her, a brief murmur of a kiss, meant to say _this, and more_.

“That’s dangerous,” Violet said. “We’re in public. In China.”

Myka leaned back and smiled. “Then come to my room. We’ll pretend we’re somewhere else.”

Violet leaned forward, as Myka had known she would. “That’s probably still dangerous.”

“Maybe,” Myka said with a small shrug. And another smile, because she knew what would happen.

She hadn’t felt like an awkward girl from Colorado, not that night, and not during any of their other nights.

Maybe that should have told her something too.

Violet was right about the danger of displaying affection publicly in China, and that was fine with Myka. She was fine with holding Paul’s hand instead of Violet’s—tiny Paul, who spoke Mandarin almost as well as his grandparents did and was learning to read Chinese too: he would translate bits of signs and menus, sometimes to hilarious effect: “You said it said chicken,” Myka told him on one occasion when she received a plate from which a large and threatening fish glared up at her. “That’s not chicken.”  He side-eyed her with a not-sorry-at-all, fake-apologetic, six-year-old grin, and she sighed. “You’re just lucky I like fish too, Small Paul.”

He _loved_ that she called him that. He loved that she would lift him up to sit on her shoulders, so he could see over crowds. He loved that both Myka and his mother would tease his Aunt Abigail; he loved that his aunt would turn to him for help in defending herself.

Myka didn’t love him, and she didn’t love his mother. But she did love the circumstance. She loved that Abigail would joke in double entendres to make both her and Violet laugh, both embarrassed but unapologetic. She loved that Mr. and Mrs. Cho were happy to see Violet and Paul happy—that they were happy to accept Myka’s role in that happiness.

Those three weeks had rolled by so easily; she was so removed from everything, all the normal expectations.

The remove made everything easier. Everything. She could be confident, or at least let go of caring about being confident, because so little was at stake. So what if her follow-through wasn’t that great? What was she trying to prove? What was she trying to win? She had already won. Myka made a lot of the first moves, those three weeks, and later.

Now she has everything to prove. And that must be why she is so afraid to make these first moves, even though she _wants_ to, she _wants_ nothing more than her body and Helena’s together, because it is magical even to be in her presence, but Myka’s body does make very clear to her that mere presence is not enough. She is overcome, and she owes it to Helena to express that, to share it, to _show her_. She wants to feel this other body, that one over there, under her hands. Feel that skin and no one else’s. Hear that breathing, those gasps, only those. Myka can’t believe they’ve spent only one night together, but she can, because she doesn’t know everything, even _anything_ , yet, doesn’t know nearly enough… she could start learning if she could find her way there, if she could just keep talking until she finds her way there.

She doesn’t find her way there. Instead, Helena leads her there. One more time, Helena figures out how to bring her close, closer, and then she is there. And one more time, Myka lets go of everything, because Helena will not let her keep holding on to it all, as if she has taken Myka’s hands and pried her grip open, finger by finger: right hand, then left hand.

****

The morning is simple and warm and wonderful; it is vanilla ice cream and the color blue, but it is not boring, because you like what you like and you want what you want, and this is what they both want, because opening their eyes to each other is an experience of great clarity regarding what must be done. They are in bed _already_ , and they might as well have been moving against each other _already_ , here on this second, far more successful morning after.

Later, after, Myka is looking at her email on her phone when she hears Helena emerge from the shower and then from the bathroom. She looks up and is immediately dazed. “Your hair’s wet,” is all that Myka can think to say.

“Yes. Washing it often leads to that result.”

“I’ve never seen your hair wet.”

“True… but you had to have inferred that my hair had been washed in the past, and would be again in the future, correct?”

Myka understands that Helena is amused by having struck her nearly dumb, but she can’t stop looking at that hair. It’s just… it’s so… like something she can’t imagine having been lucky enough to see even this one time… and the idea that if she is exceptionally lucky (or manages to count the cards), she might see it on some future everyday basis? Incomprehensible. The extraordinary and the normal, here in one sight—the extraordinary and the normal, here in one woman. She stands up, goes to Helena, kisses her, then nuzzles the wet hair. “You smell like you just stepped out of a romance novel.”

“I’m sure romance novels are well-stocked with the fragrances found in that bathroom. Essences of all generic things botanical. What are you _doing_?”

Myka drops her arm guiltily; she’d been trying to stretch it around Helena to punch at her phone in her other hand, to keep it from going to sleep. She reaches it the other, less fun way. “I’ve been looking at that list Christina sent me, about what baby animals are called. A lot of these really are news to me. For example, I didn’t know you could call a baby pigeon a squeaker. And minks have kits. I didn’t know it. And a porcupine. Guess what a porcupine has!”

“I can’t imagine.” Helena goes back into the bathroom and emerges again, pushing at her hair with a towel.

“A porcupette! And bongos have calves. The really eye-catching thing for me there is that drums have young.” Helena doesn’t laugh. She’s paused her toweling and is staring at Myka. “Yeah, okay, it wasn’t funny,” Myka admits.

“It’s not that.”

“It _was_ funny?”

“No, not at all.”

Disappointing… expected, but disappointing. “Then what is it?” She puts her phone down, takes the towel from Helena, breathes through her romance-novel hair one more time, whispers “Is this okay?”, and at Helena’s nod, starts to dry it herself—not as a prelude to anything, just as something she wants to do. Helena leans back against her, and Myka asks again, “What is it?”

“When I can articulate it,” Helena says softly, “I’ll let you know.”

****

The meeting with Mrs. Frederic turns out surprisingly well.

The additional meetings that Myka and Helena have hastily set up turn out surprisingly well.

The flights home turn out surprisingly well. Probably. Myka sleeps through the longer one, to L.A., and if anything happened to spoil it, she doesn’t want to know.

Then the trouble starts. It doesn’t seem like trouble at first, of course… at first, it seems like Helena is asking Myka to come home with her, as Myka had very much been hoping she would, and Helena is _adorable_ , with her “I have reasons.” She is, in fact, cute, and when she follows up with an eager “Do you want to hear them?”, what Myka actually wants is to take a picture of her right at that moment and show it to Charles and Christina and demand, “How can you say that she isn’t cute? She has _reasons!_ Look at how cute she is!”

Instead, she settles for saying, “I’ll listen to them if you really need to tell them to me, but I’m not inclined to—” and she would have finished with “say no,” but Helena is off and running with her reasons, which have something to do with the hours available for sleeping… and now Myka is tempted to say “but if I’m with you, isn’t sleeping, as an activity, still sort of beside the point at this point?” But okay, if Helena wants to focus on sleeping, Myka feels like she can give her a little bit of a teasing hard time about that.

That does _not_ turn out surprisingly well. That turns out astonishingly poorly.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags: I wanted to get through the airport scene here but it needed so much more polishing that I figured nah, should post what I got, anyway I've kind of always wanted to clear up what Myka's response to Helena asking her to go home with her would have been, that mixup was kind of Helena's own overenthusiastic 'I have reasons' fault, and honestly wouldn't she just be the cutest thing?
> 
> I feel compelled to add that because of this chapter, my lovely wife and I now say "you smell like a romance novel" whenever one of us finds the other overly fragranced by the the botanically infused products provided in hotel bathrooms. I grant that this may be more than you ever needed to know, but it is the case.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess: there is something about a truly convivial dynamic between Myka and Christina that I just intrinsically dig. I can certainly see writing them as not getting along, though obviously that would make for a story far different than the original Travel turned out to be. But that/this is ultimately just a trifling little tale about people who are meant to find each other. And very nearly kill each other, physically and otherwise, so don’t worry about this part ending where it does; there’s a significant softball game, as well as some other stuff, still to come.
> 
> ETA: This chapter covers both [chapter 24](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/6933182) and chapter 25 of Travel.

“Fine then,” Myka hears Helena say. “I’ll take a cab.”

Myka wishes she felt comfortable like she had on the plane, comfortable enough to say the first thing that comes into her head: “What in the world is with that tone?” It’s as if Helena really _believes_ Myka doesn’t want to go with her and stay with her, as if she’s _angry_ about that—but why would she believe it in the first place? All Myka does anymore, practically, is follow her around like a lovesick puppy… even to Encino, for pity’s sake. Myka takes a breath to start explaining—and apologizing, because one look at Helena’s face indicates that that is very much warranted—but then she looks down the escalator they’re on, and she sees, well, everybody: Pete, Claudia, Jane, Abigail, Liam, Steve, and even Christina. This is, on the one hand, extremely touching. On the other, though, Myka is pretty sure that resolving this “stay” situation just got a lot more complicated than it ever needed to be.

When they step off the escalator, Myka gets out of the way so that Christina can hug Helena, and that at least is all right. Then Christina and Claudia start fighting and it’s… like it was always meant to happen. _Surely_ Helena sees that too. And yet Helena is looking strangely like she doesn’t want to be anywhere near Myka or anyone associated with her, and Myka is genuinely wondering how she could _possibly_ have managed to blow it between a whispered “Hey busted” to wake her up on the plane and right now.

Myka thinks, _Okay, regroup; think about real things_. “The day?” she asks Claudia. “Are you really okay?”

“Definitely better now that you guys are back. But I don’t like that kid.”

“That’s up to you,” Myka tells her.

“Is it? I thought you’d be pissed.”

Myka shrugs. “People can like who they like. Whom they like. I mean, apparently some people can, but me, I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Due to jaguars.”

“I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about, so I’m just gonna nod sagely.” She does that, then holds her huge post-it up again for Myka to see. “Steve bought me the big easel kind, just for this!”

“So solar energy really is off the table?” Myka asks. “What with you blocking out the sun.”

Claudia nods sagely again. “And I would short Coppertone if I were you.”

“Bayer,” Myka tells her. “Parent company. Though they do sell vitamins, and if there’s no sun, that means people needing to take more D. It could balance out. What I’d really short is anybody who treats skin cancer. Though that’d take about a generation to kick in, probably…”

“It’s very weird how seriously you think about scenarios that aren’t for real,” Claudia tells her.

Scenarios that aren’t for real…

Helena chooses that moment to angrily correct somebody for saying something about Pomona: “The motel was in San Bernardino!” she practically shouts. Myka is overtaken by the thought of San Bernardino, and that _was_ for real, and she wonders again how Helena could possibly imagine that a scenario in which Myka wouldn’t want to stay with her, now, given the opportunity, could be for real. Myka says, “Yes, it was in San Bernardino. I can confirm that.” She wishes Helena would at least smile back at her. At least that.

Pete runs around, being Pete. Myka wants to sit down—not even for reconciling, but just because she’s had about five hours of sleep in two nights and she has to admit, she isn’t a college student anymore. In fact she’s a grown woman, one who should be able to sit down, or stand up, or walk over to that extremely pretty girl and kiss her really, really thoroughly. Maybe that would get the point across.

Pete keeps nattering, distracting Myka from what she wants to do, which is to keep looking at Helena. “We are not going to do that,” Helena says, and for a second Myka thinks she might mean something like “stand here and listen to any more of this nonsense,” and Myka would certainly endorse that wholeheartedly—

—until seemingly out of nowhere, Christina is asking the entire baggage claim area, “Doesn’t it make sense for Myka to come home with us right now?”

“Yes,” Myka’s ready to tell her, in front of everyone, even the lucky people who have no idea what this is about, because if even Christina thinks it’s a good idea? One that makes sense? But then Pete starts collecting opinions on the matter. Consensus seems to be running in favor, so that’s pretty heartening… but Helena doesn’t look happy. It’s probably terribly dysfunctional, or enabling, or something else that’s bad, to feel this way, but the fact is, Myka _hates_ it when Helena doesn’t look happy. So Myka goes to her and tries to get a slightly better read on the whole situation: but Helena seems fine. She even smiles about the idea of being back at work the next day. So why, _why_ is she still telling Myka to just go home?

All Myka can do with regard to Pete and his apparently now-concluded poll about where she should spend the night is roll her eyes… at him for being himself, at the notion that what their bizarre little crew thinks about makes any difference to anything, and at the not-for-real idea that she wants to spend the night anywhere but… yes, right, okay: Encino. She’ll get Christina and Helena into the car, and she’ll get on the 405 and drive to Encino, and if Helena tells her to turn around and leave once they get there, then fine. That’s what she’ll do. It’s a lot of driving, but it’s late, and it’s Monday, and she’ll be headed _into_ the city on the way back, so: less traffic. But maybe in the car, or once they get there, she can somehow convey to Helena that she _meant_ to joke, even though she obviously didn’t manage that _at all_ , and maybe they can get back to where they were right before this, on the plane, when Myka was about to wake Helena up for landing but kept thinking, _I can’t; she’s too beautiful when she’s asleep_ , but after _that_ couldn’t stop herself from leaning to that ear and breathing words into it in hopes that Helena would involuntarily turn her head and Myka could kiss her once more, in the peace of the two of them, before they went back to real life. But no: here they are again in real life, real life in which every other thing Myka says is wrong. Apparently love and a driveway and being a good team that truly managed to accomplish something haven’t improved that situation in the slightest.

And it seems perfectly natural that Myka has again made the wrong decision to head for the car now and sort all the complications out later, because from behind her she hears Helena say “wait” and “you don’t have to.” She sounds _far too concerned_ , particularly as she finishes with a plea to _everyone_ : “Please don’t make her do this!”

Myka turns around to see that Helena is actually physically _shaking_ at the idea. She wonders if she’ll ever get over being astonished by what Helena comes up with as thoughts, and also responses to… well, _events_. If Myka’s being honest with herself, part of Helena’s appeal is the way she is simultaneously charm and catastrophe, the way one seems to lead so easily to the other. A kiss through flowers; a morning-after disaster. A perfect family dinner; an enraged hurtle up the 405.

Right now, it’s as if Helena has forgotten what happened before when Myka tried to say no, like she’s forgotten how they each keep deciding that the other one shouldn’t be allowed to ruin everything. This can’t possibly be the same woman who was with Myka in that hotel room last night, this morning… the one who won’t let Myka run away and hide.

But, okay, it’s true: Myka does keep trying to say no, to run away and hide. She does keep freezing up at the _most_ inappropriate times. She keeps forcing Helena into chasing her, over and over again—even though that isn’t what she means to do—and if Helena thinks this is more chasing, that Myka isn’t all in? Okay then, yes. It would make sense for her to worry that it isn’t what Myka wants, that she, Helena, has somehow relied this time on Pete and everyone else to wrestle Myka into submission… though the idea that Pete or any of the rest of these characters could force her to do anything is honestly the funniest thing Myka can think of… but. Right. Helena doesn’t know that.

Because Helena seems to see the world in grand gestures, seems to _need_ a grand gesture to put clear lines in place in any situation and make it real: she needs her Lysistrata success, Myka’s drive to Encino, their declarations in the driveway. She definitely would have needed Myka to walk around in a Chessboard T-shirt, if it had come to that. Myka thinks on the feasibility of billboards and skywriting… those will certainly be ideas to keep in her pocket for the future, if they have a future, if she can make the gesture she needs to now, and keep making vaguely correct ones as they go forward. She’s also going to have to find a creative, reliable florist, maybe one that gives a discount for volume…

For now, though, all she has on her side is the ability to tell the truth, and tell it in front of everybody. So she marches Christina back and makes every single one of the lunatics she works with (no wonder Helena and Steve have fit in so well) say out loud that they aren’t responsible for any of it—because they aren’t; this is all Myka’s fault—and then goes to Helena. Who is exactly that crazy nut from the Sumatran mountains that Steve said she is… but Myka has never felt such tenderness for anyone, has never felt such an overwhelming need to make every single thing absolutely right for any person while in actual fact getting so many things absolutely wrong.

“I made a mistake,” Myka tells her. “To the surprise of absolutely no one, including me, I made a mistake.” She explains—and she wants to preface her explanation with “please really pay attention; there will be quiz at the end”—but as Helena sags against her, in what feels very like relief, Myka realizes the extent of her error. Myka’s the one who should have had to take a quiz, and one of the questions should have been, _Does Helena respond at all well to you when you try to be flippant and cool?_ Correct answer: _No, she does not._

_For extra credit, explain your answer._ And Myka would consider doing that, but that might bring her a bit too close to the idea that Helena really could want Myka just as herself, and that… well, love is one thing. _That_ would be something far more scary.

Myka takes a step back from that edge and promises Helena that she won’t act like that kind of fake-cool idiot anymore; she’ll no doubt constantly be involuntarily figuring out new and different kinds of idiots to be… but all she wants is to keep being those idiots, all the kinds, with Helena, this absolutely crazy, dense individual who refuses to _listen_ : Myka is still reasonably sure, despite all of that, that she is the most perfect creature who ever existed. “You’ve never said I was perfect,” Helena says, when Myka uses the word. Myka refrains from telling her _yes, in San Bernardino, the first time I said ‘I love you_.’ For now, she’ll let Helena think that that Encino driveway was the first time Myka spoke of love. Let her think that; hold the other time, the first time, tight, hold it tight and delight in its having been true for what seems like so long. Weeks, certainly, but really months, since the cab, since what seemed like such an impossible-to-overcome beginning.

The beginning, when Helena did not respond at all well to Myka’s attempt to be flippant and cool.

****

“Would you ever have called me?” Myka will at a certain point in the future dare to ask Helena. It will be a time when she is feeling more brave than usual.

“Called you when?” Helena will ask back, breathlessly, because the reason for Myka’s boldness is that Helena is happy and satisfied in the most beautiful of afterglows.

“Just from my card. If you hadn’t come to Warehouse. If it had been just you and me and the cab and my card.”

“You do have very long legs. And an extremely seductive smile, when you choose to deploy it. It might have taken me a while to get over the stealing of first-class seats—” to which Myka will try to object, but Helena will kiss her into silence, “yet I suspect I would have dwelt upon those legs. And that smile. And against my better judgment, I would have called you. Possibly pretending to need financial advice. Things might have gone easier then, mightn’t they? Claudia told me, very early on, that you’re quite good to your clients.”

“Not like this,” Myka will say fervently. Then she will laugh.

That will earn her an answering chuckle. “That’s fortunate. Because if this is some sort of service you provide regularly…”

Myka will understand that there will be no misunderstanding when she responds, “I think I do provide this pretty regularly.”

And there will be no misunderstanding, either, when Helena kisses her happily and says, “I think you provide it extraordinarily.”

Every time Helena says something like that—says it in a way that Myka can’t laugh off—Myka will sidle closer to the cliff’s edge.

****

The way it works out, Myka drives Christina, and only Christina, to Encino. Steve wants Helena with him, in his car—or rather, Myka is fairly certain, Steve wants Helena to be somewhere that is _not_ with Myka and Christina, in Myka’s car—and Myka has to concede that while he hasn’t been right about _everything_ Helena-related, he might not be completely off-base in trying to give all of them a bit of a breather.

In the car, Christina is quiet for the first little while; Myka glances over at the phone in her hands, and she does seem to be looking at a chess board. But she’s not interacting with it, certainly not in any way that would suggest an investment in speed chess. So when Christina looks up at Myka, Myka figures it’s going to be serious.

It is. Christina says, “Sometimes Mom loses it.”

Myka nods. “I’ve noticed.”

A long pause. Then Christina says, “Did it bother you?”

“Honestly, yeah. Not that she was upset, but because it was my fault.” Myka’s mostly keeping her eyes on the road—despite the fact that the traffic is really not bad at all, because there is fortunately no reason for a bunch of tourists to be out on the 405 at nearly nine on a Monday night—and mostly keeping her voice as calm as possible.

_“Partially_ your fault. Partially, it’s just what Mom does. Dad Steve and Uncle Charles are used to it, and Mr. Caturanga and the other Chessboard people. And me, but I can tell she tries really hard to tone it down in front of me.”

In solidarity with Helena, or something like that, Myka says, “She doesn’t have to tone it down in front of me. I’ve been known to blow some fuses myself. Like if somebody says I did something wrong when I didn’t? I can’t stand it. I _have to_ fix it. And if anybody heard them say it, I have to fix that too.”

“Yeah, but that makes _sense_. Mom can lose it about stuff that makes no _sense_.”

Myka has been told on more than one occasion that her obsession with not doing, or not having done, anything wrong is completely nonsensical. Pete had said, when she’d had a completely groundless complaint lodged against her with the SEC, “Why don’t you just let it go? Everybody’s got a complaint or two; nobody’s perfect.” She had never been more tempted to use sanda outside the gym—just one sweep of her leg, she figured, would be enough to take him down—because the complaint was his fault in the first place, and Myka had already spent an entire day on it, and there was no way in the world she was going to concede imperfection when she had not in fact been imperfect! So she’s feeling even more sympathetic toward Helena as she asks, “Stuff like…?”

Christina manages to combine a groan and an eyeroll, and Myka can instantly see how the teenage years are going to go. “Like when she can’t _understand_ something. Like a work problem, usually.”

“And yet that does seem to make at least a little bit of sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Christina says, clearly as the final word on the matter, “because she always eventually does figure it out. See, this is why I think calming signals are an important thing to research, because wouldn’t they have been useful back there?”

Myka smiles. “I’d like to think I did okay in the end.”

“You actually did. Maybe it’s hugging.”

“Well. Oxytocin, right?”

Christina just _looks_ at Myka. For an uncanny length of time, she is not herself at all, but Helena gazing at Myka through Steve’s eyes. She does it for so long that Myka eventually has to force herself to look away from Christina, and it’s only at that point that Christina speaks. “I like you,” she says.

“Thanks. I like you too.” Myka wonders if they’re done now, if she’s passed whatever test this was.

Now Christina says, “Will you work on the poker idea? With pretzels, I mean.”

Oh, yes, the teenage years are going to be something. “Let me see if I’ve got this sequence right: you tell me you like me, then you ask me to do a thing you want me to do. I think you think there’s a causal connection there.”

Christina _looks_ again.

Myka says, “Yeah, I really can’t argue with that. It’d be helpful if you actually do like me, though. I’m hoping to be around.”

“That would be okay.”

“Okay then.” Myka concentrates on the road. She takes an opportunity to move farther left, where the fast traffic seems to be going over seventy; she hopes Helena won’t mind her technically breaking the law with Christina in the car. She hadn’t seemed to mind Myka’s driving on the way to, or even from, Barstow, but in Myka’s experience, parents can be weird about what’s okay for their kids.

“Who’s Paul?” Christina asks abruptly.

So that’s the universe’s punishment, Myka supposes, for the uncharitable thought about parents being weird about what’s okay for their kids. She says an internal _oh boy_. “A Beatle. Half of Simon and Garfunkel. A quarter of Kiss. Ant-man in an upcoming movie. Butch Cassidy in a much older movie. A fugitive from a chain gang in an even older movie. The stuffed penguin my sister had when she was a kid. A tall guy in a song by Annette Funicello. A silversmith. The person who first sang ‘Ol’ Man River.’  A French Post-Impressionist painter. Pee-wee Herman. Center square on Hollywood Squares. President of Rwanda. An apostle, though not one of the twelve.”

“You forgot the octopus. Are you finished?”

“There are a ton of Pauls. I won’t be finished for days. Weeks. But okay, fine. He’s the twelve-year-old nephew Abigail mentioned.”

“Why is it funny if I date him?”

“Because I used to date his mom.” There. It’s out there. Now if something needs to be talked about, they can talk about it, and clear the air. If it needs to be cleared.

Christina is shaking her head. “That doesn’t seem very funny.”

“Take it up with Abigail. Comedy isn’t really my bailiwick.”

“Do you know who I think is funny?”

Myka is so relieved that the Paul subject seems to be off the table for now that she tells the truth: “I honestly can’t imagine.”

“Your friend Pete!” Christina says this in a child’s shriek—and the teenager-preview is gone, just like that, with that shriek of delight.

“Please don’t tell him that,” Myka begs. “He’ll never shut up about it. He’ll make himself a certificate that says ‘Christina thinks I’m funny’ and frame it and hang it on his office wall.”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

“Oh, but he would.”

“No, I mean he wouldn’t say _Christina_ ,” she says, like Myka is the most thickheaded individual who ever tried to speak: the teenager is back. “He’d say whatever weird word he just thought of that starts with C.”

“Curcubita,” Myka volunteers. Christina looks down at the phone, and Myka can read her expression easily: _How fast can I google that?_ Myka says, “Don’t bother. It’s the genus that pumpkins and golden nugget squash are in.”

Christina sighs. “I’m going to play chess now,” she announces. But she smiles.

“Okay. Chess starts with C too, by the way. And speaking of starting, I’m no expert, but I like the Ponziani opening.”

“Boring,” is the decree.

“Fine, Bobby Fischer, what’s your open?”

“Accelerated Dragon’s my favorite,” Christina says, in a far sharper voice. This isn’t child or teen; this is somebody who knows what she’s talking about. “It’s cooler to say. Also you can get into the Maróczy Bind, with all that white in the center of the board, but if you’re speed playing real people, they usually mess it up. But interestingly.”

Myka turns to stare at Christina. This causes her to come very close to missing the fact that a Tesla thinks her poky little Prius is moving far too slowly in the fast lane; the headlights filling her rear view mirror at last catch her eye, and she moves over to the right, whereupon the self-important Tesla roars by. It takes Myka a minute to pull herself together enough to mutter, “You are… not an amateur.”

Christina says, with exaggerated enunciation, “My mom is a computer genius, and she works for a company called Chessboard.”

Myka opens her mouth, closes it. Then she says, “Point taken.”

As if she has always been talking to Christina.

****

And later that night, it is as if she and Helena have always been getting ready for bed together, going to bed together, sleeping—this time just sleeping—in bed together.

The strangeness of being in Helena’s house tripped Myka up once: Christina’s bedtime had been enforced, and Charles had retired too. Helena told Myka, “Go on and get ready for bed; I’ll just check that the doors are locked.” And Myka stood in Helena’s hallway with no idea as to which door she should open. That one was Christina’s, and that one Charles’s… but was that one Helena’s room? Or that one? Or possibly there was another wing to the house? It didn’t seem like there would be room on the lot for an addition, and not even for more than four bedrooms total, not really, but this wasn’t exactly a _new_ house, and you never did know what anybody in the 1970s was thinking, architecturally…

Helena found her standing there, trying to decide on a course of action; she said, “This one,” and pointed at the door Myka probably wouldn’t have chosen. She took Myka’s hand. “I’m sorry. It seems like you’ve been here.”

“Well,” Myka said. “Yesterday.”

“No. I mean _here._ ” She drew Myka into the bedroom, and though Myka had never been there before, everything began to seem very familiar as Helena pulled her close and kissed her.

“So what did you and Christina talk about in the car?” Helena asks, very quietly, when they are curled together after a certain amount of extremely low-pressure “I am far too tired to carry anything to a conclusion but your hands and your mouth and your body do feel very good to me” proceedings.

Myka doesn’t say, “She tried to make sure I was going to stick around even though you’re a little bit over the top.” Instead, she says, “Chess, mostly. She says the Ponziani opening is boring.”

“I don’t find it boring at all. I think it’s incredibly sexy.” She kisses Myka’s collarbone. “Given that you spoke of it. With your mouth.”

Myka returns the kiss, against Helena’s temple. “Okay. In that case, I’ll only ever talk about chess opens, ever again.”

“You and Christina and Caturanga can start a club,” Helena says, but her voice is fading.

“He can bring the doughnuts,” Myka agrees. She turns her head and breathes once more against Helena’s hair—which is fortunately now less strongly infused with romance-novel botanicals—as if that is always how she has given herself permission to go to sleep.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original tumblr tags: it's all caturanga's fault that i keep defaulting to chess, why couldn't he have played go instead?, but having said that, chess vocab is pretty cool, and i do love the idea of the gambit, even though risk is entirely against my nature, as it is against myka's here


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Homestretch. Not the end, but the homestretch. Christmas is upon us! (Sort of!) Plus some other stuff that was never mentioned in Travel! Because why not! Also I apparently have a thing for Helena in evening gowns (and so, I imagine, does Myka)… yeah, newsflash. Some of this part may come across as wheel-spinning, but with luck, it’s actually not. Moving Myka into the place she needs to be so that she’s motivated to ask Pete to help her with buying, you know, black bean wontons is a little tricky. Here’s hoping that when I throw that switch in the next part, the lights’ll go on.
> 
> Also, morganfm brilliantly suggested that I link to the part(s) of Travel that each part of Traverse corresponds to. I will try to find time to go back and do that for the previous parts (ETA: at long last done!), but I will kick it off here by saying that this one picks up right where Travel's [Epilogue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/7043996) does.

Christina is right: Helena can lose it about stuff that, to some outside observers, makes no sense. But Myka is starting to discover that the trick is to try to discern what sense that stuff makes to Helena, because there is always some reason that makes her truly believe that she won’t be able to get through, or around, or out of, whatever the troubling situation is. Myka understands why Helena would be unmoved by the truth of Christina’s observation that “she always eventually does figure it out”; it’s because past performance is no guarantee of future results. Abigail has joked—well, it was probably a joke—about getting that tattooed on her forearm so she would be able to mutely hold it out and point to it when investors get all excited about whatever hot fund or sector they think will make their fortune.

So of course Helena thinks that whatever problem she’s working on will be the one she is finally unable to solve.

And when you’re working on a problem that you’re terrified you can’t solve, can’t even understand well enough to begin solving, what do you do? Apparently, if you’re Helena, one way you deal with that is by doing something that you _know_ you can do. Hence Linear B, Myka is pretty sure, though it does seem like an extreme undertaking, but then again, as she gets to know Helena better, she understands ever more clearly that she’s signed on for a certain… intemperance.

Which can certainly work to Myka’s advantage. It made perfect sense that Helena was _not happy_ when Caturanga made a great show of apologizing to Artie for her and Steve’s supposed misbehavior. Caturanga then informed Helena that Artie had to be allowed to maintain this misapprehension in perpetuity… thus creating an obviously unsolvable problem, so Helena has continued to be _not happy_ about it: “When did I in actuality misbehave?” she asks Myka one afternoon out of the blue, apparently seriously, despite the fact that it has been weeks since Caturanga laid down this particular law. _And_ despite the fact that this is at least the tenth time they’ve been through the question. “Tell me when.”

“In my apartment, last Tuesday,” Myka says, to distract her; this works only intermittently, though when it does, it’s delightful. “How about we give that another try today?”

Because that is becoming easier for Myka, both the asking and the follow-through, and while she still will hesitate, still will doubt that what is hers to offer is worth offering at all… well, it seems weirdly inappropriate to think about practice, but… practice. Practice and freedom: saying “I love you” does make it easier, over time, to enact “I love you.”

Myka knows she’s the one who had said they needed time, precisely that kind of time, but the first time she brought Helena to her apartment door, unlocked that door and let her in, for the express purpose of having as much meaningful sex as humanly possible in slightly less than an hour… clearly she had been overly optimistic about the whole endeavor. “As will come as the complete opposite of a surprise,” Myka muttered as she closed the door behind her, “I’m feeling a little weird about this.”

“Don’t worry,” Helena said. “And don’t underestimate my happiness at simply being able to kiss you as much as I want to without hearing an aggrieved child complain that she shouldn’t have to be subjected to so much as a peck on the cheek.” She did indeed kiss Myka then, kissed her and walked her backwards, through the apartment, to the bed. “Aren’t you glad now that you didn’t have those walls installed?” she asked, and what could Myka do but nod? “Now, lie down. I’m just going to kiss you, as I mentioned, and I’d like to be comfortable. I assume your bed is comfortable?” And again, what could Myka do but nod? “I’ll stop if you want me to, of course, but otherwise, feel free to join in.”

Helena was really a very good kisser: just the right amount of soft pressure and wet movement and push and pull, and after not very long Myka did begin to feel free to join in. Helena felt the change, for she laughed a very low laugh, and she pulled away a very short distance. She smiled a very indulgent smile.

Myka asked, “Why are you so patient with me?” to which Helena responded, “What does it get me if I’m not?” She sat all the way up and said, quite conversationally, “Do I ever want you to grab me, without having to be talked into it? Of course I do. But at some point you will.” Myka watched the corners of her mouth quirk differently, not quite into a smirk of confidence, but Myka read strong belief there all the same.

“Are you sure about that?” Myka asked. She hadn’t necessarily meant it as a serious question, but Helena’s smile deepened again. She said nothing; she smiled and radiated love. Myka turned her head away from the brightness. “Do you know everything?” she asked.

“What will you do if I say no?” Helena’s tone made Myka look up, and now she saw a true smirk, one of calculation. Myka laughed, pulled Helena down again, and kissed her neck. Helena said, and Myka felt the words vibrating in her throat, “I don’t mind that at all. But what will you do if I say yes?” And at that, she took hold of Myka’s right hand and raised it to her mouth. She kept her eyes on Myka’s as she ran her tongue from wrist to palm to index finger.

Myka, lightheaded with pleasure, said, “I’ll believe you.”

****

Helena might not know everything, Myka has thought several times since that day, but she certainly knows enough. She knows very well, in particular, how to make Myka grin her face off: all she has to do is leave her a post-it note.

Myka had overheard a conversation between Helena and Claudia that began with Claudia railing, “Hands off, you crook! That’s a _rainbow_ pack, and it’s for special occasions! Buy your own!”

Helena, placidly: “Why?”

“Because you can’t run around stealing people’s stuff, that’s why!”

Helena, still placidly: “Of course you can. Myka steals first-class upgrades without remorse.”

“You’re not Myka!”

“How true that is. Would that I were several inches taller, but alas.”

Claudia, slightly less affronted: “What do you even need my post-its for anyway, shorty?”

“Love notes.”

Claudia, whose blush Myka could absolutely hear in her voice: “Oh. You should’ve said. Then I wouldn’t have had to get all embarrassed but also shmoopy. Quit being so cute!”

_Aha!_ Myka had thought. _Objective confirmation of cuteness!_

Myka now receives a love note every day. They are literal love notes, in that Helena writes “I love you” in a different language on each one.

“What in the world is this one?” Myka asks her, one day.

“Linear B,” Helena says blithely.

“I absolutely give up,” Myka says. She is smiling so widely, she can barely see out of her eyes. “I love you too, you nut.”

****

On an early-December Friday, Helena asks Myka to come to Encino and stay the weekend. She had spent Thanksgiving with Helena and Charles and Christina (and Steve and Liam for the actual celebratory meal), and she honestly hadn’t realized how many football games a nine-year-old and her father could watch over the course of four days. Christina and Steve were in heaven; everyone else, a little less so. But only a little. “I can’t,” Myka tells Helena now, with real regret. “I’d so much rather be with you, but I can’t.”

“It’s fine,” Helena says. “Well, it isn’t _fine_ , because I’d rather you be with us too. Obviously. But what is it that you have to do?”

“It’s a benefit for the Natural History Museum, on Saturday night. I’d happily ditch it for you, because I hate benefits, but I can’t really get out of it.”

“Why not?”

Myka, who has been putting files away and locking her desk, now stands. She holds out her hands in supplication. “I’m on the board. We all basically have to buy at least one table and go. This isn’t even the big one; that’s in June. We generally get a few celebrities at those, which is nice. I mean obviously it isn’t ever that big a deal, given L.A. It’s not the Oscars, right?”

“Wait,” Helena says.

“Hm?”

“Are you telling me you’re on the board of the Natural History Museum?”

Myka drops her hands. She edges around the desk to stand closer to Helena. “Yeah. Between you and me, I’d rather be on the public library board, but they meet during market hours. Twice a month! And the art museum boards have insanely pricey buy-ins, so this seemed like a nice compromise. Quite honestly I’m out of my league, but I conned them, I guess. They like the money I bring in.”

“You’re on the board.”

Now Myka’s starting to feel like she’s missing something. “Yeah,” she says, but she’s worried.

“Of my daughter’s favorite museum.”

“Oh my god,” Myka says, and _oh my god_ , she thinks, because of course it is. “Of course it is. Of course it is, because why wouldn’t it be? I should have thought of that… but it’s two different realms, and it just didn’t even occur to me… because the board’s for work. I like the museum fine—well, the museums, all three, because the real reason they took me, I’m pretty sure, is the Colorado thing, because they thought I could concentrate on getting more, I don’t know, authentically Western money for the Hart. But so it’s for _work!_ Exposure to bigger money! And for perks I can hand off to clients. I swear to god it never occurred to me I should hand them off to you. I will now, I promise. When First Fridays start up again in February, I’ll get you tickets. Christina can go behind the scenes of every exhibit. She can watch them unpack new dinosaur bones if she wants to. God, I’m an idiot. You’re asking yourself why you’re seeing such an idiot, aren’t you?”

Helena tilts her head. “I’m actually asking myself a slightly different question.”

“Great. I hope there’s a good answer for that one, at least.”

“I’m asking myself why the idiot I’m seeing didn’t ask me to go to this benefit with her.”

Myka thinks it might have been better if she’d stayed in her chair. Though why proof of one’s idiocy should make the knees go weak, she’s not sure… “You mean like as my date?”

“Well… yes.”

Might as well tell the truth. “That didn’t occur to me either.”

“It honestly didn’t?”

“As Elijah Craig in my desk drawer is my witness, it did not.” Myka holds up her right hand as she says this. She has a burst of magical thinking: if she can make Helena laugh, everything will turn out all right.

“Who in the world is Elijah Craig, and what is he doing in your desk drawer?”

“A really stunning 21-year bourbon, and he’s waiting for a special occasion.” Myka waits for maybe even a chuckle. She doesn’t get one. “You don’t honestly want to come to the benefit, do you?”

Helena says, with severity, “As I may have mentioned in several languages, I love you.”

“I hope you do. Otherwise you’ve been perjuring yourself via post-its, and I think Claudia would have a philosophical objection to that, given that you stole—”

“Myka,” Helena sighs. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I apologize. Have a good time at your benefit, and I’ll see you Monday.”

But now Myka’s berating herself: why _didn’t_ she think of asking Helena to come with her? The real answer, she knows, is that she’s never brought a date to any event like this before, both because it really is work and because she’s never really been… seeing anyone. The only time she’d even used a second ticket herself was a few years ago; Tracy had been in town the weekend of the Dinosaur Ball, so Myka had let her tag along, because as Tracy said, when did she ever get a chance to wear an evening gown in Colorado Springs?

Now—because Myka really is seeing someone, and because now that she is thinking about it, she is thinking that there’s no law mandating that work-related events feel like torture—she asks, “Do you have an evening gown?”

Helena lights up. “Do I need one?”

That she could have Helena with her… Myka can’t fathom why, after everything they’ve already been through together, her imagination had failed her on this point. “You do if you’re coming with me to this thing.”

Helena is wonderfully _sunny_ as she says, “Of course I’m coming with you.” Then the silly little nut pauses and says, “But I did push you. Was it too much?”

Myka is always surprised by how much more, in any given moment, she can love Helena. This minute more than the last. And then the next minute, more than this one. She says, “Just about as much as I needed. You’ve got to remember that you’re seeing an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re sometimes single-minded. But I’ve been told that I am too, so…” She shrugs.

“All of a sudden I’m single-mindedly looking forward to this,” Myka says. “Do you want to drive into the city a little early tomorrow and get ready at my place?”

“I’d be happy to do that. Do you want to be the one to tell Christina that she may find herself witnessing the unpacking of dinosaur bones?”

Myka grins at the idea. “Now I’m single-mindedly looking forward to that, too.”

****

As Myka, already dressed in a dark silk suit, waits for Helena to finish gowning herself, she feels the gnaw of a panic attack. Seven clients—three older couples, plus one widow—are coming to this event as her guests, and they’ve never seen Myka with anyone, man or woman. There’s also a younger guy who owns a company with a 401k plan Myka has her eye on, but he’s gay himself so at least that won’t be any kind of an issue. The only reason Myka has a seat for Helena at her table at all is that his husband’s out of town, and Myka hadn’t been able to find anybody else to fill the space on short notice… which the universe had probably intended as a huge, honking repetition of a bullhorn blast, one that Myka was too single-minded to understand was blaring “Helena, Helena, Helena”…

Then she sees Helena in her evening gown—it’s gray, or maybe it’s silver, or maybe it’s made of smoke and stars but whatever it is, it drapes Helena like she’s a goddess—and everything else falls away.

“Let’s not go,” she says.

“Oh, _now_ you want to grab me? Myka Bering, your timing…”

It’s Helena saying her name that does it: Myka grabs her.

They’re a little late for the cocktail hour, but “it’s fashionable,” they assure each other.

As they’re walking in, Myka says, “It’s a shame we couldn’t have been unfashionably late, because now we have to live through a really boring video tribute. I forget which big donor we’re saying is the best human being who ever lived, but that’s the general gist.”

“Hold my hand,” Helena commands.

“What?”

“If you don’t want me to bolt in an attempt to escape the dull proceedings you just described, hold my hand or put your arm around me.” Myka goggles at her, and Helena smiles. “As you said, it isn’t the Oscars, but there might be photographs, and we’re lovely together. I’d like it if you looked like you like me a little.”

“A little. A little?”

“If you genuinely aren’t comfortable, I’ll withdraw the request. But I’ll remind you that you asked me here as your date.”

“I did. Under a little bit of duress, but I did.”

“And what do you consider appropriate for a date?”

Myka takes Helena’s hand. Then she realizes that that isn’t enough, and she locates her arm around Helena’s hips. “Thank you,” Helena says into her ear. It’s a prize.

As it happens, none of Myka’s worries were well-founded: her clients think Helena is the most charming person who ever drew breath. Which she is, but… it’s like Helena’s flexing a well-developed muscle Myka didn’t even know she had, some kind of social-animal thew. Myka wants to do nothing but watch her talk to people.  

As the evening wanes, as the crowd is thinning, Myka tells her, “You know, I’ve stopped counting the number of people who’ve thanked me for bringing you. I’ve also stopped counting the number of those people who also asked for my card. How are you _doing_ this?”

“You said it was work. I certainly don’t want to do anything to hurt your business… and shouldn’t I help you if I can?”

Myka shakes her head. “I wish I knew what words to say to you. Ever, but in particular now.”

“You generally do fairly well with words. I suppose you could say you’re glad I’m here.”

“My god. Of course I am.” She kisses Helena, and she doesn’t care at all whether anyone’s watching. “Even if you weren’t with me, I’d be glad, because I’d get to look at you in that dress.”

Helena smiles. “If I weren’t with you, I might be offended by your staring.”

“Would you?”

“Then again I might still invite you to take me home.”

“I like that idea,” Myka says. She likes that idea, and she likes this idea, the whole idea of this, this as part of the future: Helena _with_ her. Now she is considering the idea of Helena as always being part of this, the way… and then she realizes. The way partners are, the way _spouses_ are. Myka quickly puts that thought into a compartment of its own and closes the lid. But from that point on, she knows it’s there. She pictures Helena in her evening gown, shaking hands, talking animatedly, catching Myka’s eye sometimes, smiling… and she knows it’s there.

****

Two weeks later, Myka spends Christmas in Encino… spends part of her Christmas in Encino thinking that “Christmas in Encino” sounds like either a TV movie or a country song. She tells this to Helena. “TV movie, please,” Helena says immediately.

“Why?”

“Country songs can be so terribly sad. I’d much rather a movie with a happy, if clichéd, ending.”

Myka shakes her head. “See, you’re thinking Hallmark. But what if it’s one of those true-crime ones where it’s really ‘Christmas in Encino with an Escapee from an Insane Asylum’?”

“I do not like the way your mind works,” Helena says with a scowl.

“Really? Not even a little?”

“I think my answer depends on which one of us is being cast as the lunatic escapee in this true-crime story.”

Myka does not realize that that was a discussion of at least glancing prescience until the following week, when she and Helena have a spectacular fight. They have it the day before New Year’s Eve. They have it because at work on the day after Christmas, Abigail told Myka that her New Year’s Eve party, to which Myka and Helena had been invited and which they were planning on attending, should probably not be on their agenda anymore. When Myka asked why, Abigail said, “Because. A funny thing, really.”

“Funny to you, or funny to normal people?”

“Well. It could have been funny to me, if I had let you show up. But let’s actually go with not really funny at all.”

They were in Myka’s office, not Abigail’s, so Abigail had nothing with which to occupy her hands. If something wasn’t funny, she was definitely going to need something to keep those hands busy. Myka asked, “Want to dismantle some pens?” and Abigail nodded. Myka handed her three and said, “I’ve got plenty more if you need them. Now tell me what you’re talking about.”

Abigail unscrewed a barrel. “Violet. And what’s-her-name.”

“And you’re talking about Violet and what’s-her-name because…?”

“I think you can work this one out on your own.”

“What do they have to do with your party? I mean it’s not like… oh. You’re saying that’s what it _is_ like.”

“Yeah.” She extracted the ink cartridge and examined it. “This one’s almost empty.”

“Go ahead and throw it out,” Myka said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“It was last-minute. Paul’s going on some trip with a friend’s family, and Violet decided to be spontaneous. She’d already bought plane tickets by the time she called me, so it’s not like I could say no.”

“I get it. It’s okay. You do throw a great party, though. I’ll be sad to miss it.”

“I was honestly going to just let you two show up and maybe film it, because oh my god. Your _faces_. Golden.”

Myka nodded. “But also, Violet’s face.”

“Yeah. Which is why. Because I know she really is over you, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t absolutely get her goat to see you deliriously happy with someone else. And you know, I’ve historically been interested in getting her goat a lot of the time, but not about this.”

“You make a good point. Make another one for me: tell me how to explain this to Helena.”

“What’s to explain? I uninvited you from the party.” Abigail handed Myka one of the pens. “I can’t get this one undone. You’re a brute; do it for me.”

Myka obliged, but she said, “You’re a much bigger brute in the gym than I am, at least to hear Winston tell it. And Helena’s going to want to know _why_ you uninvited us from the party.”

“So tell her why.”

“Oh, because _that_ would go so well.”

“I think you underestimate her. Does the clip come off of this one?” Abigail asked.

Myka was about to say “no, it’s welded on,” but Abigail snapped it off. “I guess it does now. And I think you don’t actually know her.”

“Not in the biblical sense, true. She’s not my type. A little too, you know, needy.”

“Which is part of the reason I think this is going to be… interesting. Maybe you’d like to help me break my leg or something, so I could conveniently be in the hospital the night of the party?”

Abigail’s joy at the idea was immediate and transcendent. “I would _love_ to help you break your leg. Seriously, I think I could get everybody, except maybe Claudia, on board with helping me help you break your leg. We could rig up a huge Rube Goldberg system for it and everything—that’s what I need to film. Very OK Go.” As her enthusiasm increased, so did her dismantling speed.

Myka handed her another three pens and asked, “Can I have anesthesia first? I don’t want it to hurt.”

“No.” Decisive. “If you aren’t writhing in agony, where’s the fun?”

“Then it’s really a tossup for me, pain-wise: tell Helena, or have my leg broken?”

Abigail snorted. “Your relationship sounds heartwarming.”

“It’s actually great,” Myka said, as the inevitable smile overtook her face.

“If you say so.”

“Except for the times I get blindsided, it’s great. And sometimes the blindsiding is in itself great. I just never know when the great times are going to be, as opposed to the… slightly less great times.”

“If you say so,” Abigail said again. She pushed the pile of barrels, cartridges, springs, caps, nibs, and clips over to Myka. “Have fun.”

“Putting the pens back together?”

“Yeah. Let’s go with that.”

It takes Myka until late afternoon on December 30th to broach the subject, and it happens then only because she finds Helena in her bedroom, standing in her closet, looking critically at her clothes. “I’m trying to figure out what to wear to the party tomorrow,” she tells Myka. “A cocktail dress? Or more casual?”

“It wouldn’t matter to Abigail, and you’re gorgeous whatever you wear,” Myka tells her. She takes a deep breath. “But.”

Helena turns away from her clothes. “But what?”

Myka wonders if she might be able to _will_ her leg to break… she tries it. To her vast disappointment and slight relief, it doesn’t work. “Here. Okay. Here’s the thing. Okay. We aren’t going.”

“We aren’t going,” Helena repeats.

Myka nods. “To Abigail’s party.”

“We aren’t going to Abigail’s party. And yet I thought we _were_ going to Abigail’s party.”

“Turns out we aren’t.” Maybe if she keeps this all very matter-of-fact, Helena won’t ask—

“And _why_ aren’t we going to Abigail’s party?”

“Yeah. I thought that’d probably be the next question. So: because of… other attendees of Abigail’s party.”

Helena sighs. “What has Pete done this time?”

“No,” Myka says, but she laughs and has a moment of confidence that she might actually get through this. “Not Pete. Surprisingly, I’ll grant you, but not Pete.”

“Then who?”

Myka figures if she can’t get her leg to break, she might as well sit down, so she does, on the bed. “Violet. And… what’s-her-name.”

“Who?”

“Violet. And, like I said, what’s-her-name. It’s weird, but Abigail and I can’t remember her name.”

“ _You_ can’t.”

That’s the first really dangerous tone Myka’s heard thus far. “I _said_ it’s weird,” she points out defensively.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Helena says, and now _all_ the red flags are flying, but Myka has no idea what she could possibly do about any of them, not at this point. “We are not going to the party. Because your ex is going to be there.” She pauses. She walks to the bed and stands in front of Myka. “How long have you known about this?”

“Since. Um. Friday.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“That is very true.” No use denying the facts.

“You waited this long to tell me.”

“I didn’t _wait._ I… stalled.” Facts, schmacts.

“Really,” Helena says, and now her expression is reminding Myka of the one she wore almost all the time several months ago, before anybody ever kissed anybody. A time when, Myka is pretty sure, Helena didn’t like her, not one tiny bit. “And why is that.”

“Because I was pretty sure you’d have a look on your face just like this one.”

“Really,”  Helena says again. “And what look is that.”

“Like you want to kill me.”

“I can’t _imagine_ why that might be.”

“Look. I stalled too long. I see that. I see it _really clearly_.”

“Do you.”

“I should have come home on Friday and just told you. But I was pretty sure you wouldn’t be pleased, and you have to grant that I was right about that.” Right? Because Helena isn’t pleased, so Myka _was_ right.

Apparently not. “I don’t have to grant anything of the sort,” Helena says. She crosses her arms, and Myka realizes that’s the first time she’s ever seen that gesture look both defensive and aggressive at the same time. “You still haven’t told me why it is that her presence means we can’t go. What are you worried will happen? I’m not going to claw her eyes out. And if you’re to be believed, she won’t claw mine out either. So what is the problem? Why can’t we all act like adults, as Steve loves to recommend?”

“Well. There’s always the possibility that we _can’t_ all act like adults.”

“Are you saying you think I can’t control myself?”

Myka says, and she thinks it is very reasonable and true, “Well, sometimes you can’t. I mean—”

“You are a fine one to talk about self-control,” Helena snaps.

“I’m not actually talking about self-control. You brought that up.” Myka thinks this is also very reasonable and true.

“Because you think I don’t have any!”

Myka doesn’t have firsthand experience with quicksand, but she figures it’s probably a lot like this argument… “That is not what I think!” she says.

“Stop lying to me!”

“I’m not lying to you! I haven’t ever lied to you. You’ve _thought_ I lied to you, but that isn’t the same thing.”

“Do not _condescend_ to me!” Helena has her arms folded so tightly that her hands are turning white.

“I’m not… you know what? Fine.”

“Do not disengage either!”

“ _I’m not!_ I just don’t see what good can possibly come of you yelling your head off at me!”

“Oh, as if you’ve never yelled at me?”

“Have you forgotten the _circumstances_? I’m pretty sure I had what any court would call provocation.”

“Court?!? We’ll just see what’s admissible in _court_.”

“Great,” Myka says, and even she can hear that her tone is contemptuous and awful; she should stop talking, but she looks at Helena’s white hands, and Helena is being just as rigid as Myka is being dismissive, so she keeps on going. “If Steve’s to be believed, now you’ll lock yourself in your room and get a law degree. Call me when you’re done. Or don’t. Either way.”

“Call you?” Helena says a derisive “ha!”—also pretty contemptuous and awful—as an exhale. “Why would I do that? It would entail _speaking to you!_ ”

Myka pushes herself up and off the bed. Now she’s towering over Helena—a normal person might give an inch, maybe, but oh no, not Helena. Helena just stands there, some perfect little avatar of rage, while Myka… Myka’s just big and _wrong_. She shouts, “I’m not all that interested in speaking to you either, so I guess we’re even!” She stalks out of the room.

Helena slams the door behind her.

Myka goes outside, to the front porch. She intends to… well, she doesn’t really know; stand there and breathe? She breathes for a minute, then she walks into the driveway and looks at the garage door. She sits down, wraps her arms around her knees, and looks at it some more.  She closes her eyes and doesn’t look at it; as she does that, she hears the front door open and close. Someone sits down on her left: not Helena, but Christina. Someone sits down on her right: still not Helena. Charles.

“Quite the disagreement,” Charles says.

Myka turns her head and opens her eyes. “Yeah.”

Christina, from her other side, says, “Bet you wish you knew those calming signals now, Myka.”

“Are you guys not concerned about this?” Myka asks.

Charles scratches his mustache. “I’m not having a disagreement with anyone.”

“I’m not either,” Christina agrees.

Myka can’t do anything but sigh. “You’re both really, really helpful.”

“It’s kind of your own fault,” Christina says. “It’s usually better to tell Mom stuff sooner rather than later.”

“The child is entirely correct.”

“I’m getting that, thanks,” Myka informs them both. “So any advice about what I should do now?”

This gets a small chortle from Charles: “You can wait for the storm to pass.”

“Or you can try to apologize now,” Christina offers.

“Is one of those better?”

Christina pats Myka on the shoulder. “It’s like you weren’t listening when I said the thing about sooner rather than later.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original tumblr tags: this actually is the homestretch, no lie, with the end coming sooner rather than later, P.S. I had that board in mind for Myka from the beginning, but I couldn't work it into the original without busting up the narrative flow, but here there is no narrative flow!, so I'm throwing that in, plus all the other kitchen sinks I can find!, stand back!, they're heavy!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to sound ridiculous as an intro, but a word-related pet peeve of mine happens to come up glancingly in this part, so: “bicep” is not a word. It’s “biceps,” both in the singular and in the plural. The muscle usually referenced by that term is the biceps brachii, or biceps of the arm (there’s also a biceps of the leg, the biceps femoris). Thus each arm (and each leg!) has a biceps. Not a bicep. Anyway, this is relevant to a tank-top situation. In the middle of the night. So probably no one will care about words anyhow.
> 
> ETA: In the intro to the previous chapter, I belatedly said I would start linking these chapters to the corresponding part(s) of Travel, yet I completely forgot to do that when I posted this. So in case you are interested, this chapter takes place in the middle of Travel's [Epilogue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/7043996).

Sooner rather than later, Christina said. So Myka waits only as long as it takes her to be sure that her heart rate, at least, is back down around normal. She tests her voice to make sure it isn’t too loud. Too contemptuous. She has no real contempt for Helena—just for the argument, which, yes, was her own fault. She knows it; she’d known it when they were fighting. She’d tried to tell herself for the briefest of moments that it was because Helena was an escapee from an insane asylum… but no, that’s Myka, for thinking that she might somehow have been able to dodge the implications of what she should have said days ago. The one saving grace—and maybe it really is grace, but maybe it’s not and Myka is just kidding herself—is that she doesn’t feel like she’s blown it completely. That’s new.

So Myka screws her courage to the sticking-place. Knocks on Helena’s bedroom door, through which no one has heard much of anything in the half hour since it was slammed. Scratches the back of her head. Considers saying a prayer of some sort, then reconsiders, because it seems overdramatic.

Helena opens the door, and while Myka had expected some slight lessening of her earlier rigid intensity, the slack and drooping posture that greets her is a surprise. Helena’s eyes spark, for a second, as she looks at Myka, but then she drops her head and moves away from the door to let Myka in.

“I thought you’d left,” Helena says, head still down.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you can.”

Now isn’t the time to protest, romantically, that that isn’t true. Now isn’t the time to be romantic at all, despite the fact that all Myka wants to do is put her arms around Helena. But Helena doesn’t need comfort now; she’s not losing it. She needs Myka to tell her the truth. “My first instinct is to say ‘no, I can’t leave.’ But you’re right. I can. I won’t, though, not unless you want me to.”

That makes Helena look up. Maybe she had expected the romantic protestation, but she doesn’t look disappointed. “I don’t want you to,” she says.

Myka hopes that that, too, is the truth. She nods. “Okay. Then I’ll say this: I made a huge mistake. I didn’t tell you right when I found out. That was wrong, and I apologize for it.”

“What about your claim that I lack self-control?”

“Sometimes you do.” Helena’s brow begins to furrow, like she’s going to dispute it, but Myka hurries on, “And sometimes I do too. But please listen to me: in this particular argument, that was really not one of my claims. I said I didn’t think it was true that everyone could act like adults, and please, again, _listen to me_ : I wasn’t referring to you. I was in fact referring to Violet, who still doesn’t like being in the same room with me, okay? And as Abigail pointed out, she _particularly_ wouldn’t like being in the same room with me if she can see that I’m deliriously happy with someone else!”

Helena looks down again. “You could go without me.”

It’s a test, a silly test, and Myka wants to ask Helena if she’s doing it on purpose… but that doesn’t seem at all like Helena, not at all. This isn’t some Lysistrata plan. This is Helena hurt and insecure. “Why would I want to go without you?” Myka asks.

“You said Abigail has a party every year, and that it’s a very good party. So if you want to go, you should go.” Her shoulders make tiny shrugs as she speaks, little dismissive shrugs.

“Really?” Myka asks, and she wonders how it is possible to feel this much tenderness toward another human being. How it is possible that only five months ago, she did not know she had the capacity to feel this much tenderness.

“Yes,” Helena says, as every bit of her body language, from the sad angle of her neck to the shield her arms form over her chest to the restless retreat-shuffle of her feet, screams NO.

Myka would bring her hands to Helena’s face, would kiss her with every bit of this tenderness that she feels, but all of that body language is screaming NO to the idea of being touched, too—and Myka does not want Helena to feel, ever, that she must, out of some desire for self-protection, shrug off Myka’s touch. “Now you’re the one who’s lying. That was the most pathetic little ‘yes’ I ever heard. And of course I don’t want to go without you. What I really wanted was to go _with_ you, and I still want to go with you, because the only actual party we’ve ever been to together was that one at Caturanga’s house, and I still feel like it wasn’t a party so much as a serial interrogation.”

“I’ve apologized for that.”

“I know. And I’m apologizing for this.”

Helena looks up. She looks down again, and then she closes her eyes. “Did you mean the part about being deliriously happy?”

“You’re asking that like it’s a real question,” Myka says. If this were not the aftermath of an explosion, she would laugh at the question, but also at herself, because yes, most of the time she is delirious, frenzied with happiness, feeling as she did when she was a little girl engaged in the only athletic activity at which she has ever excelled: careening down a mountainside on noodling skis, yelling into the wind, elated at the idea of _almost_ losing her footing on every carving turn.

“It _is_ a real question,” Helena says.

Myka wants to laugh again. “Do you ever look at my face?”

“Of course I look at your face.” That’s got a little bit of snap to it, and Myka is relieved.

“Then it shouldn’t be a real question. Helena, please. Look at me.” She would add “you nut,” but Helena has to be in the right mood to hear that the way Myka means it. So she says “please” again instead.

Now Helena does look, and while she seems to like what she sees—she kisses Myka, Myka kisses her, and they’re very close to being all right again—Myka wishes she could kiss Helena into real belief, because it is very very clear to her that some important part of this hasn’t yet clicked into place for Helena, but whether that’s because it just hasn’t, or because Helena doesn’t want it to, Myka doesn’t know.

And again, again and as usual, it’s not that she can blame Helena for actively deciding not to go all in, if that’s what she’s decided. Myka keeps getting so many things wrong, or as with the museum board, just doesn’t _see_ or _think_ —and when she does see, as in this party situation, she _also_ thinks, and the thinking makes her start to fear that the truth is not going to see her through. The joke and the dodge. Putting things off—because they might be bad, but also, sometimes, because they might _or might not_ be good, and it is better—no, it is _safer_ —not to know.

So maybe they are both playing it safe.

****

And maybe because Myka has noticed this, maybe because she has had the thought, things start to change. Not hugely, and not all at once, and Myka doesn’t know if it’s that she herself begins to stand back a little, wondering what will happen… circumstances change as well, because as January comes to a close, so does Chessboard’s contract with Warehouse. Myka doesn’t see Helena every day anymore. For a while, that fuels them when they do see each other, because with absence, the heart grows fonder, yes—and there are also bodies, two bodies that want each other, and they grow hungrier.

But Myka goes to Encino less often now. She sees Christina less often, and she supposes it’s better not to be frank with herself, or with Helena, about how much that hurts… she does take Christina, with Helena, to the season’s first First Friday at the museum in February. She takes them in March and April, too, but the April event is strange, even though Christina is thrilled as usual, chatters a mile a minute with the women scientists of the Nerd Brigade as usual, begs both her mother and Myka for more time, more time, more time, the D.J. plays till ten, why can’t we stay till ten…

The entire April First Friday situation had started out wrong-footed, because the museum was holding the event on the second Friday, due to the actual first Friday being Good Friday. Myka would have sworn, in court, that she’d told Helena about that, but of course telling Helena things didn’t always mean Helena remembering she’d been told things, or even knowing she’d been told them in the first place—and that meant that when the Friday that was technically first had arrived, Helena had called Myka and they had had a conversation in which Myka thought they were making plans for the following week while Helena thought the plans were for that night. That in turn resulted in Myka not showing up when and where she had ostensibly said she would… and in an increasingly “uh oh” exchange of texts that began with Helena’s “are you all right?” and ended, after extensive back-and-forth confusion, with Myka’s “On my way this minute. Please don’t leave.”

Myka had already closed the blinds in her apartment, preparing to go to bed at, for her, the usual (early) time; the vivid springtime sun that met her as she drove out of her parking garage disoriented her, as if she’d skipped a night of sleep. She was so unsettled, by the light and by the misunderstanding, that she took a route that she should have known better than to try at 5:30 on a Friday, thus turning what should have been a fifteen-minute drive into a half-hour nightmare of blaring horns and related irritants.

She sat in the car for a minute after she parked it. Helena was not going to be pleased; she was going to take this as symbolic somehow, and Myka knew that if she herself were keyed up from a drive through downtown? That wouldn’t help the situation at all. So she tried to work herself into being able to act like Steve’s recommended adult. She wondered, as she sat and tried to breathe mindfully, whether Liam would say that Steve took his own advice.

Myka found the Wellses standing on the bleached stone steps of the now-closed museum: Helena white-faced and tight-lipped, Christina seemingly unconcerned. As Myka reached them, Christina leapt to hug her and said, “It’s good that you finally got here. Mom was worried.”

“Just your mom, not you?” Myka asked.

“I knew it was supposed to be next week,” Christina shrugged.

Helena gaped at her. “You _knew?_ And you let me believe that Myka might be hurt or—” She stopped abruptly, but Myka could imagine the rest, something like “standing us up.” Helena went on, “Why would you do that?”

Christina shrugged again, but she started to smirk in a way that reminded Myka very much of Helena. “To see what would happen,” she said.

“Myka and I are not an experiment,” Helena said. Myka expected her to be angry, but instead she sounded tired. And wounded.

Myka moved to put an arm around Helena, felt hesitation… then surrender, or possibly fatigue and nothing more, as Helena leaned into her. “We’re an experiment in something,” Myka said, and kissed Helena’s cheek. Then she told Christina, “But it’s true that I don’t remember signing any consent form for this.”

At that, Christina lost all smugness. “Don’t tell Uncle Charles.”

Helena said, in a stronger voice that Myka was very glad was not being directed at her, “Trust me, Charles being made aware of this is the _least_ of your worries.”

“You know,” Myka said, and she knew as she started talking that she was trying to rescue Christina, just a little bit, thus proving that she was not a real adult at all, but actually the pushover Tracy was most likely never going to stop teasing her about being, “speaking of being made aware, how did you know this was the wrong week, anyway?”

“I follow NHMLA on Twitter. Don’t you?”

Myka blinked. “That never occurred to me.”

“You are so old,” Christina said.

“Well, you’re so… young. Probably too young; aren’t you cyber-endangering yourself somehow?”

“That’s Facebook,” Christina scoffed. “Twitter’s fine. I don’t follow anybody weird, and I don’t tweet anything personal. Mom and Uncle Charles make sure.”

“Do they,” Myka said. She asked Helena, “Okay, then, social-media know-it-all, where were you with the data points this time? Why don’t _you_ follow NHMLA?”

“Given that Christina does, I had no idea I needed to.”

Myka sighed. “You are so old.”

Finally, Helena laughed. Myka said, with great relief, “Given that I’m here and you both are here, would you let me take you to dinner? I swear I’m not trying to undermine any consequences you might be planning for this one’s bad experimental procedures… it’s mostly for me, not Christina, anyway. I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m pretty sure, other than conclude that you just didn’t want to see me tonight.”

Helena leaned away, not fully, but a little. “And in that, you were very wrong.” She mock-frowned. “I should have a nice meal while making both you _and_ Christina sit in the car.”

Myka pulled her close again. “We’d just hotwire it. Well, _she_ would. I’d aid and abet.”

“Can we please go to dinner?” Christina asked. “I really am sorry.”

“May we go to dinner, and I don’t believe you in the slightest,” Helena told her.

“I’m a little sorry. That you got worried about Myka.”

“And?” Helena prompted. Christina looked at Myka; Myka shrugged. Helena sighed. “And aren’t you sorry that Myka was pulled away from her evening plans?”

“Not really. Should I be?”

“I should say yes,” Helena said severely, but she glanced up at Myka.

Myka smiled. “I guess I should too. But since my evening plans were basically to sit on the sofa brooding about how you didn’t want to see me…”

“I don’t believe you in the slightest either. You can’t have been at your apartment. It took you far too long to get here.” Myka heard, in Helena’s voice, displeasure, doubt, wariness…

Myka tightened her hold on Helena’s shoulders. Kissed her cheek again. Wondered, as she always did, where that insecurity could possibly be coming from; ideated a tiny nondenominational prayer of thanks that at least she was here to counter it. With oxytocin, if nothing else. “Right. I’m so busted. In Los Angeles, the evidence against me is that a drive from point A to point B took more time than expected? You realize how that sounds, right?” She shook her head against Helena’s. “I think you just don’t want to believe anybody tonight. Which is probably fair, given that you were pretty solidly duped by this kid right here.”

Christina had laughed at that; Helena had smiled. Myka took them to dinner and said things about how ridiculous it was that two supposed adult professionals could be so very bad at talking and also using calendars; Helena said it was her own fault, clearly, calendar or no, because she should have been paying more attention to what Myka actually said. Myka told her, “I think this round of ‘which one of us made the bigger mistake’ is a draw, okay? Because I do remember: when you hung up, you said ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ and I should have called you right back and said ‘wait, what?’ instead of letting myself get distracted by Pete celebrating his new multi-million-dollar account by squirting everybody with a water gun.”

“I love Pete,” Christina had said.

“Everybody loves Pete,” Myka told her. “But he shouldn’t be allowed to carry a weapon. Particularly not a water-based one that’s shaped like an alligator.”

“Could I please have a water gun that’s shaped like an alligator?” Christina asked her mother.

“You can have Pete’s,” Myka suggested. “I confiscated it.” Then she looked at Helena. “Or, as I actually meant to say, of course you can’t have a water gun that’s shaped like an alligator, because what kind of fool would think you should have something like that?’

“My kind of fool, apparently,” Helena said, and that had set _that_ evening, at least, definitively back on its feet.

The next Friday, the real First Friday, Helena holds Myka’s hand as usual, smiles at Christina as usual. She isn’t pulling away; if it were that, Myka could pull her back, or she could at least ask, “Do you want to end this? Is that what’s happening?” But Myka can’t put this feeling into words, can’t even come up with a question to ask. It’s something like listening to music with a speaker wire loose, hearing a slight hum at certain frequencies… most of the time, the hum isn’t there, but once it hits the ears, they can’t concentrate fully on the music anymore; they’re always poised, waiting for that wrong vibration. And Myka imagines she can see that same suspension in Helena’s eyes, can hear it in her voice, but it doesn’t seem as if Helena knows what she should do about it, how she should counter it, or fix it, or even step around it and resume. So she’s just waiting. For a sign? _Skywriting_ , Myka thinks, _“I love you” in Linear B in the sky above Encino_. Or… Myka thinks the next thought distinctly, hears the words echoing in her head: _“Will you marry me,” in all the languages, in the sky above Encino_. Maybe not a sign as big as that…

But she takes the thought of marriage—partner, spouse—out of its box. She holds the thought in her hands, and she turns it over and over and over.

****

She resees Helena sitting across the table from her at the restaurant they went to for Valentine’s Day, rehears her say “This is for you,” reopens the flat box Helena handed her. There, again, is the aluminum New York City taxi medallion—“New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission,” its raised lettering said—declaring its bearer a “Licensed Taxicab.” “You didn’t do anything dramatic and illegal like track our first cab driver down and steal his medallion, did you?” Myka had asked. Joking. She was joking.

“No,” Helena said, with a shrug and a slight turn of her head. “This is just a generic expired one. I found it on eBay.” Myka had meant to make a joke, but what she’d done instead was make Helena want to dismiss and devalue the most romantic gift anyone had ever, Myka is fairly certain, given anyone. Myka had tried to make up for her mistake by telling Helena how much it meant, and later that night, in Helena’s bedroom in Encino, Myka had tried to show her how much it meant.

The medallion now lives on the nightstand next to Myka’s bed. She touches it every night, and every time she does, she wishes she were touching Helena instead.

****

She replays the poker tournament Pete had hosted (very kindly, to spare Myka the anxiety of her apartment being overrun) in March: he, Myka, Helena, Christina, Steve, Liam, Jane, Abigail, and Claudia had competed, but Myka was so intoxicated by the idea of being able even to hold Helena’s hand without fear of eyerolled reprisal from a nine-year-old—because poker for PDAs, that had been the deal; she and Christina had shaken on it quite solemnly—that she concentrated on doing that and more (though of course not _too_ much more) as often as possible and barely looked at her cards. That Christina eventually triumphed was no surprise, of course, but that she and Claudia traded heads-up wins for almost half an hour certainly was.

“Will you come home with us?” Helena had asked Myka at the end of that evening.

“Of course I will,” Myka said.

That night was beautiful, and as Myka relives it, it reminds her of the way the museum benefit back in December had opened her eyes to possibilities. But while that had shown her so clearly the image of herself and Helena as a couple, the poker-tournament night, all of it, presented her with the idea of becoming a true piece of the complicated but interlocking unit comprising Helena, Christina, Steve, and even Charles (who was practically present, given the often-remarked-upon vehemence of his refusal to take the opportunity to lose anything more, stale pretzels included, to his niece). During the holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day—Myka had felt herself an outsider: welcomed, but a visitor. That night with her colleagues, though, showed her that Pete, Abigail, and everyone else looking from the outside already saw her as part of that unit, and if they were on the outside? How easy it was for Myka to see, to believe, that she could be on the inside. Easy and beautiful.

Beautiful to go home and convince a victory-drunk Christina to turn out her light and at least pretend to go to sleep. Beautiful for Myka and Helena to go to bed and neither sleep nor pretend to, but instead to love, and love, and love more, as if they were in the motel in San Bernardino _and_ the hotel in New York, as if they were in Myka’s apartment before the benefit _and_ after it, as if (Myka had realized later) they needed to bank love against all manner of looming crises.

At a certain point, Myka fell asleep, but she woke again when she felt Helena get out of bed, leave the room—oh, down the hall, checking on Christina—then come back to slide under the sheet. She slid in behind Myka, who if she had not been so drowsy would have thought more clearly her “there she is” thought, because they had not spent a full night together in some time, and now, finally, there was again this feeling of _presence_ in the night, _there_ she was, always meant to be right _there_ …

“Are you asleep?” Helena asked.

“Maybe,” Myka tried to say; it came out as not quite a word but apparently enough of one, because Helena started moving her hands again, moving her hands and kissing Myka’s neck through her hair and saying “not yet” and “don’t be asleep yet.” Myka’s eyes were still closed as she said, “You forget, your schedule’s a little different than mine these days.” She captured one of those moving hands, though, and she brought it to her tired, but still hungry, mouth.

Helena said, directly into her ear, “I don’t forget that at all. I never forget that. I remember it every day that I don’t see you.”

“I remember it too.” Myka turned her head and murmured this into Helena’s mouth. “I remember it when I’m going to bed alone at eight every night.”

Against Myka’s mouth, Helena said, “I remember it when I can’t call you and hear your voice right before I go to bed, because you’re already asleep.”

Myka rolled over onto her back, to give Helena all the access she wanted, if she wanted it. She opened her eyes, looked up into a surprisingly serious face, insofar as she could see it in the dark. She said what she had intended to, anyway, though it seemed too flippant for that face: “It’s like we’re in a long-distance relationship. Different coasts.”

“That’s why when you’re here, I don’t want you to sleep at all.”

“At all? You’re very demanding.”

“Yes, I am.” And in her mouth was all of that demand, everything she _wanted_ from Myka, and she clearly wanted heat that would build and build and—she pulled her mouth away. “Am I too demanding?”

“Of course not. It’s good. You’re good.” She turned Helena over, felt more heat building, everywhere they touched. “Keep demanding. Don’t let me get lazy,” she said, mouthing at earlobe, jawline, sharp chin.

“I really don’t think of you as lazy.” This said with an arch, an offering, of her neck.

“I don’t know… here you are, dressed again. Obstacle course. Making me work for it.”

Helena laughed, soft and low. “A tank top and pajama pants? That’s your idea of an obstacle course?”

“In the middle of the night it is. You know I’m not very coordinated, even when I’m wide awake.” And she was not, but now there was certainly something about pushing a sleeve off a shoulder, even clumsily, pushing a sleeve that wasn’t even a sleeve, just a thin strip of fabric… and then leaving it off the shoulder, a loop around the biceps, a reminder of undressing in progress; and Helena partially undressed was always enough, just as a concept, to make Myka sweat… but given the middle of the night, it did take her a minute to fully process the idea that if she kept pulling at the neck and the not-sleeves that the flimsy shirt would end up moving in the wrong direction entirely, not up and off—so, fine, she pulled Helena’s torso toward her, and up and off that flimsy shirt went.

Helena fell back and said, “You seemed to handle that particular obstacle well enough.”

“Luck.”

“Skill. Now try this.” She pulled Myka’s hands down to the pajamas, and Myka knew them by feel: they were from the jaguar-print set that had been one of her Christmas presents to Helena, about which Myka had said, as she handed Helena the box late on Christmas night, in the bedroom, “I didn’t want to give them to you in front of everybody,” in response to which Helena had called her a strangely prim Lothario. Myka shrugged and said, “Something about streets, and sheets, and the difference,” and Helena hadn’t even put the pajamas on, not that night.

But on the poker-tournament night, Myka was glad that Helena was wearing them, obstacle though they were, for Myka’s hand was slipping inside them, and she and Helena were trading silly, playful words about fate and driveways and reconciling, until Helena’s voice took on a breathy strangle, and Myka said, “You _are_ making me work for it. You’re fighting it, I can feel it. What are you afraid will happen?” And she didn’t even mean it as a question, or if she did it was a tease, but Helena’s answer stopped her: “That you’ll be gone,” Helena said.

“What?” was all Myka managed to say, but then Helena stopped fighting, and all that mattered then was whether Myka had made her feel as good, in that moment, as she possibly could.

In the morning, breakfast with Christina and Charles was not nearly as beautiful as the night that had come before: it was fine but brief, for Helena had to drive Myka back into the city to Pete’s house to pick up her car, and then they both needed to go to work. The drive— _a Sunday drive_ , Myka thought, with irony—was not beautiful either. Clouds in the sky gave a gloom to the day, and Myka spent the long, overcast stretch on the freeway remembering what Helena had said in the dark, wondering whether she had meant it, trying to decode it, or at least to determine a way to ask Helena to decode it for her.

Helena had just pulled up to the curb near Pete’s house when Myka finally blurted, “You don’t think I’m going anywhere, do you?”

“No,” Helena said, briskly. “Well, on your client visits next week, but other than that, no.”

So she clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Myka said, “Okay. Because I’m not. You know that, right?’

“Right.”

It was like the “yes” with which Helena had tried to send her to Abigail’s party: Myka didn’t believe it for a second. But in a car in front of Pete’s house was not the time or place to begin to deal with it, or even to fight about it. So she leaned over and kissed Helena, a kiss that started as a brief touch of lips that Myka meant as “we’ll see each other soon”—meant as “this doesn’t have to worry you _because_ we’ll see each other soon”—and yet it wasn’t brief, didn’t end; Helena _was_ worried, and Myka didn’t know how to reassure her.

Helena, when she finally pulled away, said, “I’m sorry. I’ll just… miss you.”

And maybe this was why they hadn’t spent a full night together, not since February—because even if Helena hadn’t said what she said, even if Myka hadn’t been trying to puzzle out any particular problem—such a night made the next day, the next days, so much more difficult.

****

So Myka thinks and rethinks. She spends time at her computer; she searches and researches. She thinks and rethinks yet again.

And five days after that second April Friday, Myka knocks on Pete’s office door. She says, “Pete, I need you to do something for me.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slightly edited tumblr tags: the part that follows this part will be mostly a duet, not Myka and Helena, but rather Myka and Pete, because I like to put them in a car and let them talk to each other, talk to each other about Helena, for whom, incidentally, Myka probably had a difficult time finding those jaguar-print pjs, because there's a bunch of leopard out there, not so much jaguar, but Myka's pretty committed to getting what she wants, when she's on a quest for something, (or someone)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned in tags of the previous chapter, this is mostly Myka and Pete. They gotta go to a place and do a thing. Well, Myka has to, and Pete’s probably the best backup anybody could ever have, right? Particularly when black bean wontons are involved. And as mentioned in Travel's [Epilogue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/7043996), to which this chapter is, as with the previous, interior, they are indeed amazing.

The market has just closed, so Pete is loosening his tie. He yawns enormously, stretches his arms high above his head. Myka thinks maybe he hadn’t heard her, so she says again, “I need you to do something for me.”

Pete leans back in his chair—he has it adjusted so that he can recline very nearly horizontally—and says, “Yeah, okay. Except I refuse to do the actual murder. I’ll bury the body if you want me to, though.”

“No, I need you to go San Luis Obispo.”

He looks pained. “And never come back?”

“With me. I need you to go there _with me_.”

“And neither of us was ever seen again,” he intones.

“On Saturday.”

“Neither of us was ever seen again on Saturday?”

Myka walks to his desk and very carefully, very deliberately sets her hands on it. “Here’s what you should do now: you should say, ‘Yes, Myka, I’ll go with you to San Luis Obispo on Saturday.’”

He looks at her hands, looks up at her face. “That’s a long drive.”

“I’ll drive fast. Pretty fast. And then when we get there, we look at one thing, and if it’s the right thing, we’re done. We turn around and come home.”

“What if it isn’t the right thing?”

“We panic, because we don’t have a backup.”

“Maybe we should get a backup.”

 _“There is no backup!_ ” Myka tries to breathe; she’s already hyperventilated twice today, and she really doesn’t want to almost pass out yet again. She can just imagine Christina explaining how studies have shown that to be detrimental to higher cognitive functions.

“Okay, calm down. I’ll do it, but only if you promise to tell me on the drive up what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I’ll probably tell you so many times you’ll want to muzzle me.”

“You’re selling this trip like whoa. Can Mom come too?” He makes like he’s going to pick up the phone and call his mother, and Myka slaps his hand.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “I can’t deal with more than one person.”

“Why do you even want one person?”

“Because I’d chicken out otherwise.”

“Why not Abigail?”

“Because she’d laugh at me.”

Pete snickers. “I don’t even know what we’re doing, and I’m _already_ laughing at you.”

“But differently. I’ll come by your place at six.”

“On _Saturday?_ ” he whines.

“I could show up at five instead. With a bugle.”

“Fine,” he says, with a roll of his eyes.

Relieved to have this conversation, at least, out of the way, Myka turns to go back to her office and concentrate on trying to keep breathing till Saturday. Pete yells after her, “But I know you don’t even have a bugle!”

“I’ll buy one!” Myka yells back.

“You won’t know how to bugle it!”

“I’ll hire somebody to bugle it! Or to bugle you!”

Abigail, who has just emerged from the tiny cubby of a room that houses the printer and the secure shredder, asks Myka, “Is bugle even a verb?”

“It is now,” Myka mutters. “It means ‘to bludgeon Pete with a brass instrument.’”

Abigail sighs. “And people are always saying _I_ say things that sound dirty.”

Myka decides she wants to bugle everyone she’s ever met, in a non-dirty but extremely bloody and painful way. Except Helena. But maybe also Helena, for making her want to do this crazy thing in the first place.

****

When she pulls up in front of Pete’s house on Saturday morning, Myka has, in the passenger seat beside her, a cardboard carrier holding three coffees, plus a bag containing a stack of napkins, two sets of plastic utensils, an everything-with-cheese bagel, five packets of cream cheese, a yogurt parfait, an apple, two bananas, a small loaf-shaped coffee cake, a blueberry scone, and two energy bars. One of the coffees is for her; everything else is for Pete.

Once he’s eaten over half the contents of the bag and drunk his first coffee, he opens his eyes and says, “Are we there yet?”

“We’re hardly out of the city yet. We aren’t even to Thousand Oaks, much less SLO.”

“I see signs for Enceeeeeenooooo…”

“Okay, good, you’re awake enough to read things. Now drop it.”

“Drop Encino? Are _you_ dropping Encino?”

“I’m not dropping anything. Eat the apple, or your mother’s going to kill me for feeding you nothing but junk food and bananas.”

He eats the apple. Then he says, “Okay, spill it. Why are we in the car?”

“Because we’re going to San Luis Obispo.”

He waits.

“Because there’s something I need to look at in San Luis Obispo.”

He keeps waiting.

“Because there’s something I need to look at in a jewelry store in San Luis Obispo.”

His cartoon-eyes-bugging-out look really is impressive, Myka has to give him that.

“Yes,” she says, “it’s exactly what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinkin’ _cufflinks for me!_ ”

“Yes. Like I said, exactly what you’re thinking.”

He eats the two bites of coffeecake he has left. Then he says, “I think you should eat something. There’s a banana and a bar, you could have half of either of those.”

“I’ll eat after I see the ring and buy the ring. If I eat before that, I’ll throw up.”

“Because of how much money you’re spending? Why do we have to drive all this way for you to spend it, anyhow?”

“We’re driving because this place sources everything—and I mean _everything_ —responsibly. I can’t propose to Helena with some ring made from precious metals mined with pollutants and decorated with blood diamonds. She might not care, but I bet Christina would.”

Pete snorts. “That’s who you should’ve brought with you. I bet that kid can keep a secret, no problem. Poker face for the ages.”

“Nondisclosure is kind of her specialty,” Myka says.

“You ready for that?’

“For what? Nondisclosure?”

“Having a kid.” He looks at Myka expectantly, and she nods, because strangely, she feels sure about that part. Or maybe it’s that she feels least worried about that part. Either way, it’s Christina. Pete goes on, “I mean I would’ve said you and H.G. should have little nerd babies together, on account of you being hot nerds in love, but lucky you! She comes complete with nerd kid. Not that I really think Cardshark’s a nerd, by the way.”

“That’s good. She loves you, by the way.”

“Of course she does. Everybody loves me. Including you, even though you sometimes pretend like you don’t because I don’t have ‘manners’ or whatever. Hey, because you love me, you’re buying me lunch, aren’t you? I looked up restaurants already, because there’s no way we’re driving all this way without trying a new place.”

“I’ll buy you lunch. I’ll buy you lunch, and I won’t even care about your total lack of manners, just as long as I’m not lying passed out on the floor of a jewelry store.”

“That’s the part that’ll be because of how much money you’re spending, right?”

“No, that’s the part that’ll be because I’m about to ask somebody to marry me. She’s going to say no. She is. I have to prepare myself for that.”

Pete says, with a gentleness that surprises Myka, “Why would she say no?”

“Well,” Myka says. She’s thought about this. A lot. “Let’s start with the big problem: I’m the one asking. And we haven’t actually even been together that long, so it’s probably too soon anyway. And I really do feel like I _get_ Christina, but maybe Christina doesn’t think I do and she’s been telling her mom that all along. And maybe Charles hates me, even though I wish that weren’t a dealbreaker, but it probably is, and if I’m asking and it’s too soon and Christina hates me and Charles hates me, what chance do I have, given that Helena probably hates me too?”

“Maybe you should walk that back a little.”

“Pete, it’s been weird lately. We don’t see each other, not nearly enough, and it’s _killing_ me.”

“And you think getting married will fix it? I dunno about that…”

“No, that’s not it. She likes it when I say things out loud, she likes a big statement, so I think proposing, I think really _asking_ , will make it clear where I _stand_.” Because this _is_ where Myka stands. She’s terrified of this place where she’s standing, but it’s where she’s standing, and she might as well stand _up_.

“If I know you, this is no chintzy little ring we’re talking about, so you’re about to drop some serious coin on making that clear.”

“I don’t care about that. But Pete, the real thing is…”

“What’s the real thing?” he asks, and there is that calm attention again.

It allows Myka, enables Myka, to say the _real_ real thing. “I want to be married to her. I never wanted to be married to anybody before. What if she says no and then I never feel like this again?”

“I still don’t see why you think she’ll say no.”

“Because I get everything wrong.”

He shakes his head. “The number of things I’ve seen you get wrong, I don’t even need fingers for counting. Because it’s nada.”

Now she would take both hands off the wheel, if she could, and smack him. “You tell me I’m wrong all the time!”

“Not about stuff that counts.”

Myka groans, “You don’t know how many times I’ve gotten it wrong with her. On stuff that counts. It’s basically an unbroken streak of wrongness. God, she is so right to turn me down. _I_ wouldn’t want to be married to someone like me; why should _she_?”

He sighs. “Mykes, she loves you. You might be having a little rough patch or whatever now, but I’m pretty sure you’ve had rough patches before. Or have you forgotten whatever it was about Pomona?”

Pomona. San Bernardino, Encino, New York, and every other place they’ve ever been. “She drives me crazy. _She’s_ crazy. Most of the time she doesn’t even _listen_. She drives me _crazy_.”

“I know.” Pete grins. “Didn’t know you wanted that, didya?”

“I didn’t know I wanted _her_ ,” she says. “But I want her.”

“That’s probably good, because you’re about to propose, and she’s about to say yes.”

“She probably won’t.” She has to keep saying it, because if she lets herself believe it’s possible…

“She will.”

“Just… don’t say anything to anybody about this, okay? Because if she says no, or if I lose my nerve, I don’t want you to have told a bunch of people.”

“Okay. But you shouldn’t lose your nerve, because she won’t say no. Because she loves you and she’s hot and I’m totally jealous.”

This is a surprise. “Really?” she says, and he bats at her head with the bag full of breakfast detritus. “Quit it with the Abigail moves!”

He bats her again. “Am I really totally jealous of how you two look at each other? Come on. That whole poker game, for crying out loud. If some girl looked at me like that and I looked back? My mom’d start shouting about grandbabies and I’d be holding a package of Pampers in a convenience store at 2am before I could remember my _name_. And I would _love it_. You’re so damn lucky. You better cash in those chips… if only so I don’t have to tell H.G. that she’d better propose to _you_.”

Myka says, desperately, “On pain of _death_ , Pete. You reveal this on pain of death.”

“Okay, okay. But there’s no way you’re losing your nerve… do you remember what you did the day after you met her? You walked into my office and said ‘Pete, I just met the smokin’ hot woman I’m gonna marry.’”

“That isn’t even vaguely what I said.”

“It’s what you _meant_.”

“In the interest of accuracy,” Myka says, “what I in fact said was, ‘Pete, I have to tell somebody what happened yesterday,’ and I proceeded to explain what a fool I made of myself.”

He nods. “Right. Over the smokin’ hot woman you’re gonna marry. And then there she was in the conference room, and I said ‘Wow, she _is_ hot,’ and the rest is history or destiny or something else that ends in Y.”

“Mockery,” Myka sighs.

“Mostly that,” he agrees. He then eats the remaining bar and banana, slurps half his second coffee, and starts in again with “Are we there yet?”

****

Hours later, when they are back in the car, now heading down 101 toward L.A., Pete is raving about black bean wontons. He hasn’t stopped his wonton hosannas since he bit into the first one at the restaurant; Myka, on the other hand, could have been chewing black-bean cardboard, for all the attention her brain was willing to pay to a mundane activity like eating: all she did was stare at the bag that sat on the table in front of her. It seemed so small, that bag, far too small to contain the enormous symbolism of the piece of jewelry that rested in a box inside it.

In the car, Myka’s phone rings, and this actually makes Pete stop in the middle of the word “wonton.” It becomes “won-H.G.!” because that’s who’s calling. “Uh…” he says, as Myka makes no move other than a panicked exhalation, “aren’t you planning to answer that?”

“God no.”

“Why not? You loooove to talk to her. Also I looooove listening to you talk to her. Your voice gets all…” He drops his pitch an octave. “‘…hey baby.’ It’s hilarious.”

Myka gapes at him. “Not once in my life have I ever said ‘hey baby.’”

“It’s what you _mean_. Come on, answer the phone, lovergirl.”

“I can’t say ‘hello’ to her right now, much less ‘hey baby.’ If I do, she’ll know something’s happening; she’ll hear it.”

“So you’re not going to talk to her again until you actually say ‘let’s get hitched’?” He drums his fingers on the dashboard. “I think she’ll get su-spi-cious.”

“No, I know I have to talk to her. But I’m going to try to keep it as brief as possible, so maybe she won’t catch on.” Even as she says it, Myka knows it sounds stupid… but she’s pretty sure that if she does try to talk to Helena, every word from “hello” to “hey baby”—not that she would _ever_ say “hey baby”—would come out as a nervous squeak.

“Don’t they say that most people pretty much know when they’re gonna be proposed to?” Pete muses.

“I don’t care what anybody says. I’d really like this to be a surprise.”

“What if she has a heart attack?”

“What? When? Before I get a chance to ask her?”

“No, I mean _surprises_ sometimes give people heart attacks.”

Myka feels a strong urge to close her eyes and rest her head on the steering wheel. “You think I’m going to say ‘Helena, will you marry me,’ and she’ll be so surprised she drops dead?”

“No. Well, maybe. I’m just saying, it could happen.”

“Fine,” Myka says, just to get him to shut up. “I won’t say that. I’ll say something else.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original tumblr tags: am I chortling too much over the 'hey baby' part?, yes I am, somebody's doubtless written a substantially similar exchange between Myka and Pete, because I'm pretty sure that's the kind of grief he would give her, so I apologize and will edit if it turns out I've inadvertently reproduced any other work too closely, unless it was mine, in that case I'll leave it


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part was originally written not long after marriage equality became the law of the land in the U.S., and it caused me to reflect on the fact that, with regard to marriage, I do tend to have a lot of my Mykas and Helenas get married, and I know that’s from some perspectives too conventional. I freely admit that I myself am totally conventional: I love being married; I love wearing a signifying ring; I love knowing, every day, that I made official, witnessed promises to my wife. But I think my compulsion to repeat it in fiction also has to do with how entering into this most conventional of social contracts seemed so impossible for so long. I think I’m still explaining to myself that it’s really true that conventional public shorthand—“this is my wife”—is ours, our whole community’s, for the using. Anyway, that’s a longwinded justification for Travel!Myka having bought a ring.
> 
> (P.S. This part ends essentially where Travel's [Epilogue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/7043996) does, but Traverse has a bit more ground yet to cover.)

Myka makes a plan. Now that she has a ring in her possession, she has to make a plan, because all that occupies her mind is the ring that is in her possession. She sees, from one angle, that the best idea would be to get in her car, drive to Encino, knock on Helena’s door, and say “Hi. Some words that aren’t ‘will you marry me,’ because I don’t want you to have a heart attack, but that’s the general idea.” Helena’s eyes would narrow in the way that they do when she doesn’t quite understand what’s happening, and then she would ask Myka if she’s joking. Myka would say of course not, and then… and then, unfortunately, Myka’s projections stop. Because lately, an enthusiastic “yes, of course” followed by a leap into Myka’s arms doesn’t seem realistic. But then again, neither does a dismissive “no, of course not.”

So Myka will be better off with a plan. A plan that has well-defined steps, each of which is in place for a particular strategic purpose. Also she’s going to have to figure out how not to babble like an idiot, and that’s going to take a certain amount of rehearsal time. She doesn’t know what teleprompters look like, but maybe there’s a portable version? Because as she sits down and tries to figure out how to do this, she realizes it would be best to do it in Encino. She needs to show that she respects Helena’s choices, respects where she chose to put herself and her daughter (and Charles). Myka thinks—hopes—she has a comparable idea, but that remains to be seen. For starters, she wants to show that she gets it.

The plan, as it comes together, is that she will do this on the upcoming Saturday, thus giving herself a deadline of a week to come up with what to say and to practice saying it.

So, step one: Call Steve and make sure he’ll be okay with taking Christina museuming on Saturday. Not that he doesn’t usually do that, but Myka realizes, mid-conversation, that in order to impress upon him the true importance of the situation, she’s going to have to… tell him.

When he hears the news, Steve says, “I honestly thought such a day would never come. You are a brave soul, Myka Bering.”

“Well, fingers crossed,” Myka says. “It’s one of those banana hook namaste plays.”

He laughs and wishes her good luck. Myka sits back in her chair and congratulates herself, because step one went surprisingly well.

All right, then, step two: Call Charles and ensure that he’ll keep Helena at home, both before and after Steve collects Christina. Charles, too, will have to be told.

She asks him, “Can you keep a secret?”

“That depends,” he says.

“On?”

“On whether Christina knows I have a secret that I’m attempting to keep.”

“Ah. No, she won’t know. Not unless you tell her.” Which Myka supposes she wouldn’t put past him, but she is apparently just going to have to trust people today.

“In that case, my secret-keeping abilities are unsurpassed.”

“Excellent. Here’s the plan…”

Charles listens until she gets to the end. Then he bursts into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” she demands.

He continues to chuckle. “I have to applaud you for the ‘can you keep a secret’ setup. That sold the joke, no question.”

“It’s not a joke! Listen to me: I am asking your sister to marry me.” She doesn’t add: and feeling very, very nauseous about it.

“You are insane,” Charles pronounces. “I have no choice about associating with her; I’m _related_ to her. And to the child.”

“You can’t kid me; you love them.”

“Of course I do, but again, I’m a _relation_. You are, against all reason, _volunteering_.”

Myka keeps the phone to her ear but puts her head down on her desk. “Charles. I don’t have a choice either. I fell in love with her.”

“I suppose that was your first mistake,” he sighs. “But that you want to compound it? I really did have great respect for your intelligence before today.”

“Look, guy who I hope is going to be my brother-in-law, just tell me you’ll help me out.”

“Of course I’ll help you out, future sister-in-law. When is Helena ever going to find another person she can dupe as thoroughly as she has you?”

Okay, so step two was a little more rocky than step one. Myka congratulates herself on it anyway.

Now for step three: This is a more difficult step, because it doesn’t involve calling anybody to work out logistics. It involves sitting quietly and trying to figure out what words to say.

On Monday afternoon, well after the market has closed, Myka tries googling “marriage proposal.” Unfortunately, that makes her hyperventilate, because all she finds is advice about what to _do_. But she doesn’t want to take Helena to a surprise exotic destination and write “will you marry me” in the sand of a beach. She doesn’t want to make Helena do a jigsaw puzzle that has the proposal written on it, because Helena would quite rightly ask “why are you making me do a jigsaw puzzle” and Myka would have no good answer. She doesn’t want to go to a restaurant and have the waiter bring the ring out with the entrées. Nothing like that, not words on a jumbotron or a billboard or even in the sky above Encino. Myka wants to be in a private place, ideally Helena’s house, where Helena will feel safe to respond in whatever way she needs to, where Myka can say the right words as she faces Helena and gives her—no, as she _offers_ her—the ring. Offers the ring, offers herself, offers everything... she is really going to have to get her breathing under control.

Tuesday afternoon, she reads of a study that purports to establish that if a marriage is to endure, the woman should _never_ be the one to propose. She laughs at that, but it throws her off her game for the rest of the day.

Wednesday afternoon involves thinking of words, typing them, reading them back to herself, and then deleting them.

Thursday afternoon, she decides, will be when everything comes together: conceptually, emotionally, vocabulary… ly.

Thus when Claudia yells “hey boss!” to her, right as she’s opening a new document that she is sure will end up being _the_ document, she yells back “I’m busy!”

Claudia pokes her head in the doorway and says, “I hope you’re not busy Saturday.”

“Saturday,” Myka repeats. That word has taken to making her reach involuntarily for the paper bag that now lives on the file cabinet next to her desk.

“Yeah, Saturday. Softball. Those dorks from Morgan Stanley _finally_ confirmed this morning, so we’re on. That same high school field, noonish.” She takes a closer look at Myka’s face and says, “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay,” Myka says. “Sure, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay? Two days before the most important day of my entire life to date, you decide to throw a softball game at me. Totally okay.”

Claudia sighs dramatically. “Not _me_. The dorks from Morgan Stanley. Wait, Saturday’s the most important day of your entire life? What happens Saturday? Does your company stock finally vest?”

“I had a _plan_ , Claudia. A plan.” She drops a fist onto the desk. “Plan!” Drops her fist again. “Plan plan plan plan plan!”

“Are you having a stroke?” Claudia asks.

Myka keeps hitting the desk. “A plan that in no way involved softball!”

“Because I read some study thing about how women have strokes and don’t even know they’re having—”

“God. You _and_ Christina? I can’t take it.” Now Myka leaps up and starts pacing behind her desk chair. It’s unsatisfying, as she has room for only two and a half steps.

Claudia gasps. “I am _nothing_ like that little poker cheater!”

“She didn’t cheat!” Myka barks.

“She counted cards!”

“For the last time: being able to remember the past is not cheating! It’s not fair to throw somebody out of a casino for knowing what happened five minutes ago!” She trips over the edge of her chair mat and barely manages to keep from knocking herself unconscious on a bookshelf.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down. Pete’s casino didn’t throw anybody out, remember? And besides, _you_ should’ve been thrown out for losing every hand on purpose so you could spend your time snuggling with H.G.”

“I did not do that!” Myka protests.

“You _ate_ half your pretzels. And you don’t even _like_ pretzels.”

Myka concedes that point with a simple “true.” Then she groans. “But what do I do now?”

“You could try pita chips. Those things are _addictive_.”

“Fine. I’ll improvise. Omaha, pita chips, Omaha. Something about a T-bird. Eighty-five. Namaste. I don’t even know. _God_.”

“I think you really are having a stroke,” Claudia tells her. She races out of the office, leaving Myka shaking her head and staring at her blank document, which is still outspokenly blank.

Five minutes later, Claudia marches back in, waving a yellow post-it with “STROKE SYMPTOMS” written at the top. She’s listed “Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding” and “Sudden trouble walking, loss of balance” as the first and second items of a list, and she’s put red post-it flags next to these. Below them are “Sudden numbness on one side of the body” and “Sudden trouble seeing.” “If either one of those other two happens, yell,” she says. “Hey, wait, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Just one, Claud. Coincidentally, that’s the number of stupid softball games I don’t want to play in on Saturday. Because _I had a plan!_ ”

****

Myka goes to Pete’s office. She tells him, mournfully, “I have to change the plan.”

Pete exhales a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I was worried you’d chicken out. Siddown, and I’ll talk you back into it.”

“I’m not chickening out! But now there’s this softball game, so I’m changing the plan.”

“Why?”

“If I’m playing in a softball game downtown, I’m not in Encino proposing to anybody. Do you see how that works?”

“Fine, okay,” Pete says. Then he snickers. “You gotta admit, it’s a little funny. Softball.”

“Why is it funny?” Myka asks.

He snickers again. “You’re so slow. Where do you play softball?”

“At that high school.”

“On its…?”

“Field. This isn’t funny at all.”

“That’s because you’re extreeeemely slow. And the field is called…?”

Myka shrugs. “Isn’t it just Whatever-The-High-School’s-Name-Is Field?”

“I give up. I think you’re right. I think she’s gonna say no, because she’s gonna realize you don’t have the brains of a _sea slug_.”

“You’re bringing up sea slugs because they’re somebody’s sports mascot, aren’t you. No, wait, that’s garden slugs. Or is it banana slugs? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s banana slugs. You meant banana slugs.”

Pete grabs her by the shoulders and stares into her eyes. He speaks slowly and carefully. “You don’t have the brains of _any of those_. Listen to me. You play softball—and baseball, for that matter—on a _diamond_. I’m just gonna assume that your big brain switched off last Saturday, and it’ll kick back in again once you’ve put this proposal business behind you.”

“Well, that’s going to be harder, isn’t it, given _softball_ ,” Myka says.

Pete pats her shoulders, then drops his hands. “So what’s your plan now?”

“After. Steve and Liam take Christina home with them after softball, and I take Helena to my place. It’s not ideal, but I’m working on not letting the perfect and the good be enemies, or however that goes.”

“If I were you, I’d work on getting a little bit of sleep. That might help your brain situation.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Or when I’m engaged. One of the two.”

This makes Pete _giggle_. “I’d say something about how I bet you and H.G. won’t do much sleeping, but it’s no fun to give you a hard time when you’re so fried. Just know that I’m saving it up, okay? I’ll take it easy on you now, but I’m saving it up for when you’re tired for funner reasons.”

Myka doesn’t have enough energy, or concentration, to hit him or tell him to shut up or even thank him. She waves a weak hand in his general direction and heads off to change the plan.

****

Step one redux: She calls Steve. “Change of plan,” she says.

Steve sighs. “You rethought. It’s okay. No one could blame you.”

“No! I didn’t rethink! Hasn’t Liam told you yet? Softball!”

“Is that code for something?”

Myka snorts out a noise that approximates a laugh. “No, it actually means softball.” Then she explains the new plan. As before, this step goes surprisingly well.

Step two redux: She calls Charles. “Change of plan,” she says.

Charles huffs. “You’ve reconsidered. Not unexpected.”

“No! Why does everybody think that?”

This time it’s Charles snorting out a laugh. “This is just a guess, but it may be because my sister is involved.” But Charles is thrilled to learn that he is no longer a part of the plan, so: step two is once again a success.

Step three redux: This one isn’t really redux, in that it’s still the same as the original step three, and it’s still sitting there uncompleted. Myka tables step three for the time being, because her plan now requires a step four: call Helena. Call Helena and invite her and Christina to the softball game. Myka stares at her phone for what seems like an unconscionable stretch of time… she loves this woman; how can she be afraid to talk to her?

She forces herself to place the call—to say, when she hears Helena’s voice, a simple “hi,” like a normal person would. She starts explaining about softball, but to her own ears, she sounds artificial; she tries to _just talk_ , but there’s some kind of space between her brain and words, like she has to translate them from a vernacular known as “the shrieking in my head” into whatever recognized, official language it is that Helena and other people speak. Helena probably thinks she sounds like Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer.

She wants to say “I love you,” but those words loom as the only ones from the shrieking language that Helena might understand, and if Myka says those words, all the rest will come tumbling out in one long, entreating yelp. Not over the phone, she tells herself, don’t do this over the phone, you will never forgive yourself if you do this over the phone.

A tipping point comes: her admonishing herself not to speak is drowning out everything else. She has to stop talking; she says something about texting Helena the details. She disconnects the call, stares at her phone again, and wonders what kind of sign it is that she can’t bring herself to say words to this woman she purports to love more than anything.

****

Myka is reminded, at her training session that night, that her being unable to say words to Helena isn’t exactly a new wrinkle during times of high drama in their relationship. Winston uses a little spoon sweep of his foot against Myka’s left leg to make her lose her balance; she topples over. He shakes his head at her as she lies there for a minute, trying to get her breath back. “A month ago you could defend against that, or at least hold yourself up. Now you’ve lost it again,” he says, with a click of his tongue.

Myka tells him, “That’s because again, I’m a tragic victim of liking a girl.”

“Same girl as before?”

“Same girl. You’re married, Winston. How’d you ask Margaret to marry you?”

Winston chuckles. He says, “I said, Margaret, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

“That doesn’t sound much like a proposal.”

“It wasn’t. I was going to break up with her. But then she said, why not? Why isn’t it going to work out? And I couldn’t actually think of a real reason.”

Myka scrambles to her feet; she readies herself again. “Then why were you going to break up with her?”

“We’d just spent an hour yelling at each other about a jar of mustard,” Winston says. He sweeps a kick behind Myka’s knees, and she falls again.

“Mustard?” she asks, from her customarily prostrate position.

Winston raises his palms. “It was almost empty. _Too_ almost empty. Should never have been put back in the refrigerator that way.”

“Who put it back so erroneously?”

“She did. Such that when I went to use the mustard, guess what? There wasn’t enough left for my sandwich. And it was really good mustard, too.”

Myka gets back up. “I see.”

“So I yelled, and then she yelled, and then _we_ yelled, and I told her it wouldn’t work out, but then when she said why not, I understood.” He swings his elbow at her head; that, she blocks. “Nice,” he tells her.

“Thanks. Understood what? That you loved her?” Myka shakes sweat out of her eyes and tries not to feel like she’s done the only competent thing she’s going to be able to lay claim to, this entire week.

Naturally, the next elbow knocks her sideways; she staggers and falls again. “No,” Winston tells her. “I understood that mustard really shouldn’t determine the course of your life.”

“That’s… bizarre. Probably also profound, but it doesn’t help me figure out how to propose.”

He offers her a hand up. “I thought I just told you.”

“I’m not going to tell her that I don’t think it’ll work out,” Myka says as she sets her stance one more time. “I’m already trying not to give her a heart attack.”

“Up to you. I’m just saying, I ended up married.”

They are circling each other in the ring. Myka thinks she sees him drop his right arm, so she spins a kick in; she finds herself on her back one more time. She says, “Listen, if I do figure out how to end up married, would you mind if I brought her daughter Christina around? She hasn’t done martial arts, but she plays soccer.”

Winston helps her up again. “How old is she?”

“Nine. Are we done?”

“If you want to be,” he says. “Nine’s perfect. She’ll be taking you down in six months, tops.”

“She’ll _love_ that,” Myka laughs.

He offers her a half-speed chop to the torso. “So will I.”

Myka blocks the fake blow. “Honestly?” she says. “I will too.”

“Okay. So you get that mustard’s unimportant, right?”

“Yes. Probably. Honestly I have no idea.”

“No matter how good that mustard is,” Winston admonishes. He pulls off his headgear, then starts taking off his training gloves. “Me and Margaret, we’ve been married for thirty years so far. The great thing is, you’ve got time.”

“I hope to god that’s true,” Myka says, mirroring him in removing her own gear. She also hopes to god he isn’t going to surprise her with a takedown at the end here this week, just to see if she’s paying attention. Because she’s paying attention… but she’s really unclear on what she’s paying attention _to_.

He backs up far enough to show that she’s in the clear. Then he grins. “If you’re asking about her kid? Then I think it is true. Plus I gave you a head start with the mustard info, so really, you’re all set.”

****

Artie calls a meeting on Friday afternoon to talk about new SEC regulations. Myka contributes nothing to the discussion regarding compliance; in truth, she barely follows the conversation. She promises herself that on Monday, everything will be different. No matter what happens tomorrow, she’ll come to work on Monday morning and start understanding words again.

She’s making this promise so fervently that she doesn’t notice the meeting ending. She doesn’t notice much of anything until she feels something hit the side of her head and catch there: it’s a neon orange twist tie, and Abigail has pitched it at her from the doorway to the conference room.

Abigail remarks, “You know, I just talked to her.”

“Talked to whom?” Myka asks as she tries to untangle the thing from her hair.

“Your intended.”

“Oh, come on. How do you know she’s my intended?” She yanks the twist tie free.

“ _You_ come on. Because I have _eyes_. And _ears_. You were absolutely _whipped_ at that poker game: ‘okay, baby’; ‘whatever you want, baby.’”

Myka pitches the orange thing back at Abigail. “I do not call her ‘baby’!” When Abigail presents her with a blank stare, Myka sighs. “ _One time_ I did that. But it was just the two of us, sitting in my car.”

“Sittin’ in your _car_ ,” Abigail chortles. “Ooh, tell me more, Slick Rick.”

“Not even if you promised never to throw things at my head ever again.”

Abigail, of course, tosses the tie at her again; this throw misses Myka’s head and bounces off her shoulder to skid the length of the table—Myka jumps to catch it, but she ends up empty-handed, with her upper body sprawled over the faux-woodgrain surface. Abigail shakes her head and says, “You bore me. In a charmingly awkward way, of course. So does Liam, who’s naturally the one who spilled the beans that were spilled to him by Steve about your little ‘marry me, baby’ plan. Because I always know when Liam’s trying to keep his mouth shut.”

“I don’t have the mental resources to get mad about that right now,” Myka admits. “Wait, when did you talk to Helena?”

“Like a week ago.”

“A week ago? How…”

“She called for Steve, at Liam’s place. Long story, mostly about Steve trying to juggle avocados, but it ends with me answering the phone. Anyway, she asked if you were okay.”

“Okay how?”

Abigail shrugs. “How should I know? I told her I hadn’t seen you in a state I would really describe as objectively ‘okay’ since I met you, and that was years ago, but that you didn’t seem to have undergone any radical _changes_ in your ‘okay’ status, not since the two of you, you know, worked it out, because that did result in an okay-level uptick. Then she said she genuinely hoped Violet was okay—neither of us actually said ‘okay’ this much; I’m paraphrasing—and I said yeah, she is, and H.G. said ‘I don’t see how.’ That part isn’t a paraphrase; that’s what she actually said.”

Myka crawls up onto the table to get to the runaway twist tie. She could stand up and walk _around_ the table, but that would mean she wouldn’t now be stretched out, full length, on it, and that feels oddly good right now. “What does that even mean?” she complains.

“I’m pretty sure it means don’t leave her, baby.”

Turning over onto her back, Myka feels like she’s on a slab in a morgue. Ready to be autopsied. “Don’t _leave_ her? I want to ask her to marry me. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of leaving her. Isn’t it?”

Abigail comes to stand over her. “Don’t ask me. Ask _her_.”

“I’m _going_ to. Tomorrow, after stupid softball, I’m going to.” Myka considers suggesting that maybe alternatively, Abigail could find herself a scalpel and begin a Y incision to put Myka out of her plan-induced misery.

Instead, Abigail takes the twist tie, winds it into a snaky coil, and slips it onto Myka’s left ring finger. “So what I’m _saying_ is, I think that’s a good idea. I don’t know why you get so weird about people trying to reassure you.”

****

Saturday morning says hello to Myka by making her stab herself in the roof of her mouth with her toothbrush. She then spills her coffee in her lap as she tries to read the news on her laptop. Better to stain her jeans than destroy her keyboard, she supposes, but it doesn’t seem truly auspicious either way. She wonders if she should’ve had somebody consult tea leaves, or sheep entrails, or some other mystical substance, and tell her whether today was really the best day to be asking someone a very important question…

She paces around the perimeter of the apartment for an hour. She holds Contango, and talks to him, while she does it. Yes, it feels a little nuts to be confiding in a stuffed giraffe, but who’s he going to tell? “You can’t tell anybody,” she warns him, just in case he was getting any ideas. “You can’t tell anybody that I’m having a nervous breakdown right before I have to go to a softball game and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening and hope that everybody else pretends decently too.” Because Pete knows of course, and Steve, and Liam, and Abigail…

And counting Myka herself, that’s over half their team, right there. Half the team will be watching Myka for signs of nerves, and that will probably make the other half wonder what’s going on. And if Claudia in particular thinks something’s going on that she hasn’t been let in on, she’ll be relentless, and if she’s relentless, then Christina will no doubt decide to be competitively relentless, and everything will escalate from there.

“Maybe if I just go back to bed,” she says to Contango. He indicates that this really wouldn’t be a good idea, given that she has a ring in a box on her kitchen counter, and that it’ll very soon be joined by a flower arrangement that draws several inspirations from the San Bernardino bouquet, including white snapdragons, but complements them with others that she hopes will rhyme with the ring. She wants to show that while that night will always have been the beginning, they’re not at the beginning anymore. She’d been so nervous in that driveway, then in that motel, so desperate for what might come next but petrified of it too. Not at the beginning anymore…. but her longing mixed with terror? As with that, this.

Later in the morning, after she’s retrieved the bunch of flowers from the florist and determined that yes, they look okay in her best cut-glass vase (they were originally supposed to travel to Encino with her, just as a bouquet… alas, the abandoned plan), she decides to set Contango there on the counter with them too, to make the picture complete. “Can you handle living with Christina?” she asks him. “She’ll appropriate you, I’m pretty sure.”

Fortunately, Contango’s pretty unfazable. Myka wishes wholeheartedly that she could say the same about herself.

****

She is the third person to arrive at the school’s playing field, after Pete and Jane; no dorks from Morgan Stanley are there yet. “You holding up okay?” Pete asks.

“Fine,” Myka tells him. “Great. If I pass out during the game, just don’t pay any attention to me, okay? Pretend like it’s perfectly normal for that to happen during softball. If I’m lucky, Helena won’t know the difference.”

Jane says, “Myka, are you all right? You look pale.”

Claudia walks up, with her sweet-but-cowardly boyfriend Todd trailing behind her. “You do look pale, boss. Stock not vesting after all?”

“I spend most of my time indoors. It’s not like any of you have particularly glowing tans, by the way.”

“Shoulda shorted Coppertone when you had the chance,” Claudia shrugs.

“I told you, Bayer’s the parent company,” Myka starts. But then none of that matters, because Myka is looking toward the parking lot, and she is seeing the most important people in the world emerge from a gunmetal-gray Jetta. One that is not biodiesel, she remembers, because Helena doesn’t care about the environment. Not by Christina’s lights, anyway… and here comes Christina, as soon as she catches sight of Myka, and Myka is made so very happy by Christina’s grin and her suddenly breakneck speed.

And finally, finally Helena is there too. The sight of her is good, but the feel of her, close against Myka’s side, is even better. Myka lowers her head to kiss her, for the first time in two weeks—a two-week desert, and this kiss is a blessed oasis of relief, because it reminds her of why she’s done all of this in the first place. She’s been away from Helena for two weeks, and that’s been showily wrong— _I haven’t seen her in two whole weeks!_ —but stealthily wrong too: until this very second, Myka hadn’t realized that _not seeing Helena_ , and _not talking to Helena_ , and even _not kissing Helena_ have been part of why she’s been having so much _trouble_ with everything, with the ring, with the proposal, with the idea of all of it.

Myka wants to say could we just kiss and never stop, could we just stipulate that I already asked and you already said yes and you finally understand that I’m here and I want to be here always? That in spite of the world and time and difficulty and my stupid mistakes that make you think I don’t want to be with you, I _always_ want to be with you? That my stupid mistakes are just that: _my_ stupid mistakes, and they don’t mean I don’t love you; they just mean I have a hard time getting it right? And as hard a time as I have getting things right when I’m with you, I have an even harder time getting them right when I’m not with you… because _nothing_ is right when I’m not with you.

That turns out to be too much to be conveyed by one kiss, which Helena pulls away from as if she can tell Myka is not herself. Or is it that she’s too much herself? One kiss on a softball field… no, a softball diamond. _Oh, god, diamond_ , Myka is thinking as she tries to give the bat a practice swing, and even if she weren’t being thoroughly distracted by the idea of what’s on her kitchen counter, Christina’s derision toward that swing would still be warranted— _humanity’s_ derision would still be warranted—but Myka does get a little piqued at the idea that even Helena, who said she couldn’t play and anyway isn’t about to stand up in front of those dorks from Morgan Stanley and make a fool of herself, is regarding Myka’s swing with skepticism.

Then Christina offers up the fascinating information that Helena can, in fact, play softball. That not only can Helena play softball, but she’s _good_ at it. Myka’s thinking about Helena in a softball uniform now, and maybe she’s just slid into home plate or something, because somehow the idea of Helena a little bit dirty and scuffed up is all kinds of compelling… and yet she just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would willingly subject herself to that… but there was of course the driveway in Encino… oh that driveway… but okay, okay, okay. Myka laughs a weak laugh and says “I’ll believe it when I see it” to try to scoff herself back to something resembling normal, but it doesn’t work, because now Myka’s picturing Helena doing things that are really _physical_ … well, of course, other than… _anyway_ , she admonishes her brain, which has suddenly started showing some very blue movies, all I mean is that she doesn’t seem like she would be a very enthusiastic _athlete_. That is all I mean.

And then she feels a flash of pain, and the world goes dark.

Myka really had not expected to propose to anyone at all—ever, in the course of her life. Secondarily, she had not expected to propose in a hospital. And finally, she had not expected to propose in a hospital after having been hit in the head with a bat, and knocked unconscious, by her intended. But: “Eagle Rock school system,” she says, for that is all she can remember of her prepared remarks, and “Yes,” Helena eventually says, and later that night there is a ring on the third finger of Helena’s left hand, and Myka is the one who put it there.

Years later, whenever Myka tells people the story of how she proposed to Helena, she always uses some form of the sentence, “Shockingly, nothing went as planned.” She gets a laugh, as does the entire story.

If Helena is present for the telling, she always says, “It could not have gone better.”

Myka responds, “I could have had less of a headache when I woke up the next day.”

Helena then says, “No, I fear you would have awakened engaged to me in any case.” That usually gets a laugh, too.

At which point Myka always, _always_ kisses her, and always, _always_ says, “Then you’re right. It couldn’t have gone better.” That’s also a laugh line. But Myka always also says, quietly, “I mean it.”

And Helena always pulls Myka’s head down and kisses her in return, right near her temple, where the bat connected. She says, “I know. I do too.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original tumblr tags: I know there wasn't much Helena in this part, but she'll be more present in the last bits, which will basically take the story up through what happens in Pink,


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so this end part goes on a little longer than anticipated. Such that I had to split it in two. Hey @ddatrw, you said six parts and two epilogues, right? And who among us is surprised that I blew by that number like it was sitting still? There were just all these strings, and I started pulling on them, and before I knew it I’d have another dialogue bit that I didn’t want to throw out, and since as I mentioned I’m kitchen-sinking this baby… anyway, here’s the (beginning of the) end.
> 
> ETA: I keep forgetting these linky things! Anyway, this part picks up where Travel's [Epilogue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2512607/chapters/7043996) ends.

Myka is perfectly able to tell the story of how she proposed to Helena: original plan, softball, hospital, yes. She gets a little hazy on the details of what happened after the hospital, however, and since she’s unfamiliar with being hazy on details… she knows Helena was _fussing_ over her as they arrived at her apartment—in Helena’s car, for some kind of relay had been set up to get Myka’s Prius back into her building’s garage, and Myka was trying hard not to think too much about who was doing what to her vehicle—and she knows that if she had been Christina, she would have been rolling her eyes and saying that long-suffering “ugh, Mom.” Since she was Myka instead, she just let Helena obsess over the slowly developing knot and bruise at her temple and the reactivity of her pupils. “I’m crushing that stupid little flashlight under my heel,” Myka did say when Helena finally stopped playing optometrist and gave her permission to unlock the door.

Helena protested, “That is part of my keychain! And Christina gave it to me!”

“I don’t care if it’s your phaser and James T. Kirk himself gave it to you. _Under my heel_.” Myka remembers very clearly the faux-wounded eyes Helena turned on her; she remembers sighing in defeat. “Fine. I’ll hide it instead.”

“Your apartment is one room. How do you propose to go about hiding anything?”

“I think you’ll be a little preoccupied,” Myka told her.

“With?”

And that’s the point at which things begin to blur: Myka knows she opened the door. She knows that Helena preceded her into the apartment. She knows that Helena stopped still, and that she herself turned around, apparently too energetically, from locking the door; she crashed into Helena’s back. She knows that as a result, they were both _once again_ sprawled on the floor, and that she said, “I’m not _complaining_ that we keep ending up like this today, but what exactly just happened?”

And she knows that Helena didn’t say anything at first, just pointed at the flowers on the kitchen counter. Also at Contango. Maybe.

“You truly did plan this,” Helena eventually said. Something like wonder shone in her voice.

Myka knows she said “you nut” over and over again. She knows that she then said, “Of course I planned it! This is the _second_ plan, in fact. Ask Pete. Or Steve. Or even Charles, because he was in on the first one.” She grimaced. “They weren’t _good_ plans. And then the part with words: I wrote some things down. They were… I don’t know. Silly. I couldn’t get it right.”

“And yet you did. Exactly right.”

“Well, so did you.”

Helena shook her head. “I could have destroyed your brain. I was so foolish. You’re right: I don’t pay attention, I don’t look at what—”

Myka said, “Stop. It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

She knows it took them a long time to get off the floor. Helena checked her pupils again, and Myka whined, “I’m going to go blind from you shining that thing in my eyes. Is that what you want?”

She knows Helena started to cry at some point—and maybe it was at that point, maybe at some other point. Maybe some other points.

“I want _you_ ,” Helena said, at that point, at some point, at some other points, through tears. “That’s all.”

“You have me. That’s the whole _object_ of all this silliness. To _show_ you. Don’t cry.”

An accusation: “ _You_ were crying, in the hospital.”

“Yeah, somebody hit me with a bat or something. I was in pain. Probably. Are you in pain?”

“I’m in love.” And Helena smiled, precipitously, breathtakingly. “But I suspect it’s very much the same thing.”

Myka knows that Helena had not used that easy tone of voice, that relaxed tease, in weeks. She knows that hearing it was like their embrace on the softball field: its absence had been part of what was wrong.

She knows that Helena eventually stood in the kitchen, breathing into the flowers, still crying. “I would do the knee thing again,” Myka said, “except for the pain, and besides you already know how my pitch goes. So how about I just stand really close to you and open the box and you can let me know what you think?” She knows she did that. And Helena, Helena who could be so crazy, could be such a nut, could be chirpy or carried away or despondent or just plain frightening… she wasn’t any of those things then. All she did was hold out her hand. And that image, and the series of images that followed, Myka still has: as if from outside, she sees herself and Helena, heads bent over the tiny box; she sees herself opening the box, the hinge of which at first sticks but then emphatically doesn’t, nearly sending it flying from her grasp; she sees the back of Helena’s left hand, blue veins mapping routes through its stark whiteness, from fingers back through wrist, arm, heart; she sees her own fingers, and she knows they are cold, extracting the ring, setting the box down, taking Helena’s hand in hers, slipping the ring on. After that, the images fall to disarray… she knows there was joyous kissing, and that that damn flashlight beam was in her eyes again, and then it was in her eyes _again_ , and that at some point they were in bed—Myka is most embarrassed about her memory failing her here, for she has no idea what they did or didn’t do, with a ring on Helena’s finger, with promises firmly in place. All she remembers is that finally, _finally_ , for the first time in far too long, she was able to curl herself around Helena and sleep.

She knows that her normal memory came back to life—in one click, as a maximized window—when she woke up in the middle of the night and said “why am I thinking about Rutherford B. Hayes?” Helena switched on the bedside lamp; she checked Myka’s pupils again. Myka let her do it, then grabbed those keys and threw them the length of the apartment. And she remembers _exactly_ what they did after that.

****

When Myka wakes up the next morning, Helena is propped on her elbow, staring down at her. It’s a little disconcerting, as is the first thing Helena says: “Were you serious about buying a house in Eagle Rock?”

“Good morning?” Myka tries.

“Good morning. Were you?”

She supposes there are certainly _worse_ questions to wake up to. “See, the old Myka might have tried to pretend she wasn’t. But new and improved Myka, who had some sense knocked into her recently—”

“Which reminds me. Do you have a headache, and where did you fling my keychain?”

“Yes, I do have a headache: she’s asking me where I flung her keychain, and I would think she’d be happy that I have no idea where, because trust me, if that thing comes anywhere near my eyes again, I’ll buy a house in Eagle, Colorado instead. And move there.”

Helena sits up. “Where on earth is that?”

“Old Myka would say, it’s in Colorado, you nut. But new Myka will tell you it’s about twenty miles west of Vail on I-70. You nut.”

“Any salient difference between old Myka and new Myka is for some reason eluding me.”

“That’s because you’re a nut,” Myka says. She sits up too.

“Seriously, how is your head?”

“Seriously, I don’t know.” Myka pushes at her head; there’s still a knot, but it seems smaller than it had been. Not that she fully remembers what size it was. “How does it look?”

Helena turns and examines Myka’s temple. “Like someone hit you with something.”

“Something like a bat, maybe?”

“For which the hitter is so very sorry,” Helena says. She leans over to kiss the knot.

“It’s okay. She made it up to me. Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Helena murmurs, her mouth still on Myka’s skin.

“Well, if you think I won’t be pulling this out from time to time, as necessary, you’re an even bigger nut than I thought… I once covered for my sister when she got drunk, when we were in high school, and I still like to play that card.”

“I suspect your sister doesn’t like you to play it.”

Myka leans back. She shrugs against her pillow. “Then I suspect she should’ve stopped drinking after that third beer.”

“I suppose she and I can commiserate about the disproportionate joy you take in emotional blackmail.”

Myka says, articulating each word precisely, “You hit me with a bat.”

“I did not _intend_ to hit you with a bat.”

“Mm. You _intended_ to hit a softball about a mile, didn’t you?”

“Something like that, yes. To show you I could.”

“Honestly that’s a pretty seductive idea. You being all… sporty. Showing off.”

“Is it?”

“I think so.” Myka slides back down on the bed and blinks as innocently as possible up at Helena. “But then again, my judgment could be impaired. You might have heard, I have a head injury.”

Helena sighs, and Myka readies herself for another volley about emotional blackmail. But Helena instead dips her head and puts her lips to Myka’s in a soft kiss. She moves to Myka’s ear and says, “Then I suppose engaging in any sort of… relations would be hazardous to your fragile health.”

“Speaking of blackmail,” Myka pouts. “Or wait, no, this is extortion. Which I just _knew_ we’d get back to someday.”

“Call it what you like,” Helena breathes.

“It’s not a matter of what _I_ like. It’s the legal def—” But she can’t keep talking, because Helena has clearly decided to show extremely fast and hot disregard for legal definitions. And for Myka’s fragile health.

****

“I want a transporter,” Myka complains as, later in the morning, they prepare to go to Encino. She’s cringing in the face of the interminable drive, which is going to seem even more interminable, given that she and Helena will be in separate cars. On the freeway. On a Sunday. With the tourists.

“I thought you wanted a pickup truck,” Helena says.

“I do. But that wouldn’t help me much today, would it.”

“If it were large enough, you could intimidate the other drivers.”

“That’s got a certain appeal… but Christina would kill me. For a while there, she was tweeting me stuff about buying one of those tiny electric Fiats. I told her I didn’t think my legs would fit.”

Helena looks Myka’s legs up and down. Myka likes the force of the gaze, and it’s fine while she’s standing still, but if she were to move… she’d trip over her own feet, and Helena would probably go back to asking herself why she would ever want to be with such a gangly—“Will you stay?” Helena asks abruptly.

The way she said that… like it was Myka’s legs that made her want to ask… now Myka would definitely trip over her feet. “Do you have reasons?” she teases weakly.

“All I have are the following: You’ll most likely get very little sleep. You’ll have to leave for work tomorrow terribly early in the morning. Charles will resent you for it, and so will I.”

“Fascinating support for your argument,” Myka says. Helena now is the one who blinks innocently. Myka sighs. “Fine. Sold. What do I need… toothbrush… clothes… stack of reports taller than Christina…”

“She’s growing so quickly,” Helena says.

Myka looks at Helena’s face. She has a very particular “thinking about Christina” expression, an unexpected combination of severity and faraway wonder: “I love how you call up all your mom… ness?, just like that. And it’s true, she’s taller than when I met her… _she_ won’t fit in a Fiat pretty soon.” She slumps a bit. “I didn’t really grow until I was a teenager, and then it was terrible.”

“How could it possibly have been terrible? I love that you’re tall. Had I met you as a teenager, I would have been so envious.”

“Envious? Please.”

Helen nods. “And completely smitten. Just as now.”

“See, _there’s_ your argument. By the way, I would’ve been too.”

“Not when I was a teenager. I was a hideous little thing. Charles said it all the time, and he was right.”

Myka shrugs. “Maybe so, but I bet I wouldn’t have cared. Just like now, you hideous little thing.” Helena picks up a report from the stack that is not quite as tall as Christina. She smacks Myka gently in the head with it—taking great care to hit her on the side that is not currently bruised. “Hideous but also considerate,” Myka concedes.

****

At the Wells home, Charles greets them by saying, “Christina called me yesterday evening. Her version of events was… interesting.” He looks closely at Myka. “As is the bruise on your head.”

Myka says, “You still ended up as my future brother-in-law, so it’s not like you really lucked out or anything. Sorry.”

“I’ll just have to do some of that reconciling of which you’re so fond.”

Helena directs a slight narrowing of her eyes at each of them in turn. “You two are developing a relationship that I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m pretty sure neither of us does, either,” Myka tells her.

“Seconded,” Charles says. “Nevertheless, congratulations. Helena, I hope you understand how very foolish you’ve been.”

“What? When?”

Charles intones, “Myka, note it well: this may be your last chance to reconsider.”

Myka grins. “I told you, I don’t have a choice. And that’s okay with me.” She stops. “You know. Most of the time.” She looks at Helena to see how she’ll take this. She notes that Charles is looking, too.

Helena says, stiffly but not angrily, “I am not going to reward either of you by rising to the bait.”

“Impressive,” Myka says, and kisses her. “Keep that up for fifty years or so, and this thing might work out after all.”

****

Steve brings Christina home in the late afternoon. He pulls Myka aside and tells her, “I’m really happy for you. Also a little scared for you, honestly, but you made the call.”

And Myka tells him, because she’s been thinking about it, “I don’t ever want to get in your way. You and Helena, of course, how close you are, but particularly your parental way.”

“We’ll work it out. I’ve been co-parenting with H.G. for nine years now, and let’s see, you and H.G., comparatively… I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

Helena appears, as if a demon summoned by insult, at Myka’s side. “Perhaps _you_ should act like an adult,” she says to Steve.

Steve says, “The kid’s got a lot of so-called adults. She won’t miss me if I slack off for a while. So are you coming to work tomorrow?”

“I assume so. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Some kind of engagement honeymoon? I don’t know how these things work.”

Myka says, “I think that’s a great idea, but I for one don’t have the time. I’ve spent the past two weeks a little preoccupied; if I don’t do some business, I won’t have any business left to do. Plus I have to factor in the amount of time I’m going to spend explaining this bruise. ‘How did you hurt your head, Myka?’ ‘Well, see, I was getting in a cab, and then this pretty girl got in too…’”

“That sounds like the start of a joke,” Steve laughs. “Or, you know, bad porn.”

Myka tilts her head, considering. “I guess I’d have to say that we kind of ended up in _both_ of those, given—”

Helena nudges Myka in the arm. “Act like adults, the pair of you!”

Steve protests, “We are! I bet your bad porn qualifies as adult.”

“And come on, pretty girl who got in a cab,” Myka says, “we may be a joke, but under ideal circumstances, aren’t we kind of a _dirty_ joke?”

Christina, attention apparently piqued by the idea of inappropriate humor, asks, “Who’s a dirty joke?”

“No one,” Helena says firmly. “Myka and Steve are being childish.”

Christina sounds exactly like her mother as she says, “Act like an adult, Dad Steve. Act like an adult, Myka.”

“Well said, darling. My advice to them _exactly_.”

Myka and Steve both snicker in completely immature fashion. Helena and Christina sigh like the long-suffering adults they imagine themselves to be.

****

It’s a Sunday night; it’s dinner; it’s normal; it’s like it’s always been like this, always will be like this. Steve leaves to go home; the television is on for a while. Then Christina stands up and starts walking around the living room, through the hallway, moving things off of surfaces, standing back, framing with her forefingers and thumbs, like she’s a miniature Marty Scorsese.

Helena asks her, “What on earth are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out the best place for the terracotta horse,” Christina announces. “Myka, how tall is it?”

Myka can see where this is going; she plays along, to see what Helena will do. “Twenty-eight inches. _Huge_ pain to get that thing shipped internationally, I can tell you.”

“Don’t do that,” Helena tells Christina.

“Why not?”

“It’s presumptuous.”

Christina shakes her head at her mother. “Of course it is. That’s the _definition_. Because I _presume_ Myka’s going to _be here_. Like, most of the time. Until we move to Eagle Rock, like you said, and won’t she want her stuff? Right, Myka? You want your stuff, don’t you?”

Myka starts, “Well, I—”

Helena continues talking to Christina. “It’s a terribly long drive every day. I know, having done it for six months, and I wouldn’t want to ask her to—”

“But Mom, you _did it._ She could at least _try_. Couldn’t you, Myka?”

“I suppose I could,” Myka sighs, as if it would be a terrible, terrible burden.

Helena says, “Could you.” She looks composed, calm, but Myka hears, in her voice, something that could be described—she thinks—as hope. _Wild_ hope.

And if there had been any part of Myka still resisting any of this? It melts. “When you say it like that? Of course I could. What were those selling points again? No sleep, leave terribly early in the morning, resentment resentment, long drive…” She could drive, she _would_ drive, and apparently _will_ drive, all distances; she would, and will, forgo so much sleep, in order to answer that hope from Helena. To reward it. She doesn’t understand at all why she took that step back, or to the side, so many weeks, even months, ago. If she had thrown herself all the way in, if she had pushed, if she had refused to accept Helena’s hesitancy—if that’s what it had been… but it’s too late to worry about any of that. Now there is now. Now there is Christina still thinking seriously about where to position a terracotta horse. Now there is Helena gazing at Myka with so much hope and love that Myka thinks it might be the end of her. It’s certainly the end of her as she once was.

****

Myka spends the next several days trying to remind herself that everything isn’t as set-in-stone perfect as it seems, that the future is still unknowable. She is still trying, late on Thursday night, when she and Helena, in blissful domestic fashion, are in bed, side by side, reading: Myka on paper, Helena on a computer screen.

She realizes that Helena is glancing at her. Repeatedly. “What?” Myka asks.

“Will it be like this?” Helena asks in return.

Myka pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looks over at Helena. “Will what be like what?”

“Us. Like this. You, here, in bed, reading whatever you’re reading, looking like that.”

“Looking like what?” Myka wonders what she does look like, with her hair drying as it wants to from a shower, her glasses once again slipping down, her T-shirt having seen better days. “Like I should make more of an effort?”

“Not at all. Looking like the most bookish, the most intellectual…” Helena trails off.

Myka chuckles. “Nerd. The word you’re looking for is nerd.”

Helena asks, “Does that apply to me too?” She gestures at her laptop, which is not in her lap at all, but is instead balanced on her knees.

“Absolutely not. You’re the pretty girl the nerds would gaze longingly at, across the cafeteria, or the quad, or wherever.”

“Or the bed?” Helena says this hopefully. It’s adorable. And cute. Myka adds this to her mental “Helena _is_ cute, so there!” album.

“Is there a time I haven’t gazed at you longingly?”

“Well…”

Myka grimaces at herself. “Only when I was trying really hard not to. And even then I did. I couldn’t help it.”

“I’ve certainly spent time gazing at you. Once I realized that what I thought was animosity, or resentment, or whatever I mistakenly believed it to be, was something else entirely.”

“It’s not always something else entirely. You still manage to get your share of animosity in.”

“I know,” Helena says. The way she says it, though, is not resigned or worrisome. It’s factual.

Myka wants to be factual in return. “But if anybody’s going to marry me and resent me? I want it to be you. I haven’t ever wanted it to be anyone. Anyone in particular, or anyone at all, but now here you are.”

“You sound so _happy_.” This, Helena says with wonder.

“I am happy.” It may the most true statement Myka has ever made. “You’re wearing the ring and I’m reading an annual report. How could things get any better?”

Helena smiles indulgently. “Most people would say, leave the annual report out of the equation.”

“God no. Annual reports? They are SEC-mandated _poetry_. Listen to this: ‘Over the past five years, our bleach volumes have grown at an annual compound growth rate of 11%, and we expect further bleach growth in 2015.’”

Helena’s smile fades a little. “Is that good news?”

“Who cares? It sounds _fantastic_. ‘Further bleach growth.’ Ooh, read it in your voice!” Myka can barely get the suggestion out; she is gurgling with pleasure at the thought.

“As opposed to someone else’s?”

“No, no, I mean I want to hear it with your accent. No, wait, do this part about the impact of their proprietary railcar designs on the industrial bleach market!”

“I think I must have hit your head far, far harder than the doctors realized. Either that, or the word I was looking for _was_ in fact ‘nerd.’”

“Language at its finest! Wait, I know, read the ‘Forward-Looking Statements’ section.”

Helena gives her a hugely skeptical look, but she sets her computer aside and takes the report. “Where shall I start?”

“Here.” Myka points. “No, here.”

“‘The statements contained in this communication that are not statements of historical fact may include forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. We have used the words “anticipate,” “intend,” “may,” “expect,” “believe,” “should,” “plan,” “project,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “optimistic,” and variations of such words and similar expressions in this communication to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those matters expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements.’” She stops and stares at Myka. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“What would I be trying to tell you?”

Helena tilts her head. “Isn’t marriage a rather serious forward-looking statement?”

Myka curbs an impulse to hide her own head under her pillow as she admits, “Honestly, I hadn’t thought about that. I just love annual reports.” It’s the truth. Helena is never going to believe that—and now, having heard Helena say it, Myka herself is never going to unmake the connection, never going to read forward-looking statements the same way… never going to hear them in her head the same way, either; it’s always going to be Helena’s voice now. Myka wonders if she could ask Helena to read reports to her all the time…. or podcast them for the mind-numbing drives back and forth from Encino…

Helena looks at the ring on her finger, holds it up for Myka to look at too. “I just love _you_ ,” Helena says. “And I have to admit that I’m developing a certain fondness for this particular forward-looking statement.”

****

The antique-style, multiple-large-diamond ring Myka had gone to the jeweler intending to buy had been, when she first looked at it online, beautiful. Truly stunningly gorgeous. And expensive—through-the-roof expensive, as Pete had whistled when he’d finally hectored her into telling him the price. When they walked into the small shop, Myka saw it immediately and made a beeline for its display case; she’d listened with one ear as the jeweler, an older gentleman whose impeccable suit warred with a slight surfer-patchouli aura, remarked to Pete, “The lady certainly knows what she wants.”

“She’s like that,” Pete said.

“A blessing and a curse, perhaps.”

“Man, you don’t even know the half of it.”

“So this is for…” prompted the jeweler.

“Engagement ring.”

“Congratulations.”

Any other time, the alarm in Pete’s voice would have been utterly comical. “Ohmygod, no! No, no, no—”

But that was the point at which Myka lost it, because the jeweler thought she and Pete… and maybe this ring was the kind that Pete would buy; she could imagine him holding the hand of a woman wearing a ring like this. It was breathtaking, but not the right kind of breathtaking, not for Helena. It was the kind of ring Pete or somebody else would buy for someone if Pete or whoever wanted or needed to prove something about beauty to the person who would wear it—if Pete or whoever wanted to compare the wearer to something, something shiny that they would implicitly or explicitly outshine. And though Helena would of course outshine any ring, put to shame any stone that came from the earth, no matter its carats or its cut… that should not, should never, have been the point of this ring. This ring had to speak directly to the collision of everything Myka had always wanted to show Helena that she hoped was true, everything about how some jaguar had been chasing Myka forever, and that she finally wanted nothing more than to sit down and let herself be caught. Everything about how Helena was the only person who could ever, would ever, make Myka feel that way. How could she ever have been so misguided as to think that a pile of expensive diamonds, no matter how responsibly sourced, would say anything like that?

“It isn’t _right_ ,” she said. “Pete, what am I going to do?”

Pete said, “You know what the funny thing is?”

“How could there possibly be a funny thing?”

“Oh, I think you’ll laugh when I tell you: we’re standing in a jewelry store.”

“That isn’t funny at all.”

“But it is. Because jewelry stores have… wait for it… lots of jewelry. Like, if you talk to this nice guy here who for some reason thinks I look crazy enough to marry you, he might be able to show you _another ring_. One that’s _different from that one_.” He shrugged. “Just an idea, though.”

The jeweler said, “I’m so sorry to have misunderstood the situation, and I’d be delighted to help you if I can.”

Pete said to Myka, “Besides, I really think H.G.’s gonna be into whatever you decide on.”

“It isn’t that I think she won’t like it. I think my showing up with a ring and a question is the like it or not like it part. But I’m asking her to wear it for the rest of her life. I don’t want to ask her to wear something that says the wrong thing.” Myka gestured at the beautiful ring in front of her. “And that says the wrong thing. I don’t know how I know, but I know.”

The jeweler drummed his fingers on the case that held the wrong ring. “Do you have a sense of what you do want to convey with the ring? A sense of what your intended… and I say it in the following way only to people who I think will understand: what your intended would willingly bear?”

“That’s the problem,” Myka said. “I don’t. I mean, I do, but I can’t… I mean I don’t know what it would _look like_ as a ring.”

He relaxed his posture and tilted his head at her—it made his silver hair look longer, such that it brushed the back of his suit collar. “You recognize that a ring says something. So many people want a white diamond solitaire, because it makes a very clear statement, one that they understand. ‘Will you marry me,’ it says, in such a familiar way. Look at the ring you came charging in here to buy: the round brilliant cut in the center… the two diamonds that flank it are emerald-shaped, do you see?… and then the smaller ones surrounding them all… it’s an embarrassment-of-riches version of that traditional statement, enhanced by the vintage styling. Eminently translatable. That you turned away from that suggests to me that you do want a… different statement. A different picture.

“Think of her and look at what we have. You may not see the right one, but if something should spark an idea…” He smiled. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t inform you that we do a great deal of custom work.”

Think of her. But when didn’t Myka think of her? Myka turned around slowly, seeing dazzle and flash and shine… all this ostentation in one room reminded her of museum galas, all those benefactors sporting slivers and slabs of their incredible wealth. Wealth, capital, assets, yet none of that, _none_ of it, had been important when she’d seen Helena in a gown of darkened sky swept in by some chilly vardarac… she had still never seen Helena wear anything that suited her more perfectly.

And because that was fixed in her mind at the correct instant, because fate decided one more time to get it right, something shadowy caught her eye, a glimpse of a wolf in a pearlescent forest. “That,” she said. “That. What is it? It’s… I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s a gray diamond,” the surfer jeweler told her. “Cushion shape, rose cut. Set in matte white gold, with white diamonds illuminating the band, ten descending each side. The small white gems catch the eye first, offering just that hint of tradition… the gray stone is uncommon, and we set it in matte so as not to detract from its depth.” That was clearly a rehearsed pitch. But then he said, with apology, “I must tell you that it isn’t flawless.”

“It isn’t flawless,” Myka repeated. Wide-eyed, she turned to Pete. “Do you see it?”

Pete didn’t even look. He shook his head. “I see your face. That’s enough.”

****

Now Myka pulls Helena’s hand to her; she kisses the ring as it weighs on that hand, as that hand willingly—miraculously, willingly—bears it.

“You need a ring too,” Helena says.

Myka had not expected this. “Do I?”

“People will look at your hand.” She moves closer. “And I’m possessive. You need one too.”

“Then maybe you should’ve been the one doing the kneeling—on a busted knee, no less—and asking. Would you have, pretty girl who’s wearing a ring?”

“No.”

“‘No’? What does that mean?” Myka pulls away from her. “Wow. You’re brutally honest, aren’t you. ‘No,’ just like that? If you wouldn’t have asked, then why did you say yes? Why are we even sitting here? Why am I in Encino, for god’s sake?”

It is telling that Myka’s small freakout does not make Helena, in turn, lose it. Myka sees that, understands it, when Helena does not harden even slightly into that animosity or resentment, when instead she kisses Myka’s cheek and says, ”You misunderstand. I meant, no, not with a ring. Not the way you did, you spectacular creature, by which I mean, the woman to whom I am now, beyond all hope or expectation, engaged to be married. But I knew we needed to… have a conversation. I was terrified.”

“You think _you_ were terrified? I actually _bought_ a ring.”

Helena looks at her sadly. “And yet I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had said no, in the hospital, when you must admit I did, in substance if not in actuality, ask you.”

“All right. All right, you’re right. I admit it,” Myka says. Anything to get that sadness to leave her face. “And I think I said yes.”

It works. Helena begins to smile. “I think you said ‘Eagle Rock school system.’”

“I think I’m still a little hurt that you wouldn’t have asked.”

“I think I’m still fairly certain I did ask.”

Myka waves her naked left hand. “And yet I’m not wearing a ring.”

“I’m not as good at grand gestures as you are,” Helena says. She kisses the spot on Myka’s finger where a ring would live.

That’s perfectly fine as a gesture, as far as Myka is concerned, but she says to Helena, “If you aren’t good at grand gestures, do you know why that is? It’s because you haven’t been getting as much _practice_ as I have. Lately. Over the last, oh, several months. Due to having fallen in love with a woman who needs things made _very clear_ to her. And besides, you actually _are_ pretty good with the gestures, Ms. Love Notes. Ms. Taxi Medallion. Ms. Lysistrata Plan. As plans go, my two lame—and unnamed—proposal plans had nothing on that one. I probably should’ve gone for the jigsaw puzzle.”

“You make no sense whatsoever. What kind of ring do you want?”

“I think you should have to figure it out for yourself. I had to pick the right one out for you, so, you know, turnabout, my lovely fiancée.” She leans over and kisses Helena, just because she’s happy to have said the word “fiancée.” She doesn’t realize in that moment that it’s the start of a habit.

“I’m sure I can’t begin to imagine—much less afford—something so perfect.”

“And I’m sure you’re a nut to think I wouldn’t be happy with a piece of tinfoil twisted into a band. Some yarn. A cheap plastic thing you won at a carnival. A gum wrapper; do you think I care? I’ll wear a post-it. I’ll wear post-its in all of Claudia’s rainbow colors. I’ll wear that ‘Bering and Wells’ T-shirt that she thinks is such a good idea. I’ll get ‘Property of Helena Gorgeous George Wells’ tattooed somewhere visible.”

“Stop. You aren’t my property.”

“Well, no. But that doesn’t make me any less yours.”

“I was terrified it might have been ending.” Helena says this with her little dismissive shrug, as if Myka’s supposed to believe that Helena herself didn’t, and doesn’t, take her own fears seriously. But Myka knows better than that; this is the second time in five minutes that Helena’s said she was terrified. And if she says out loud that she was terrified, if she says it _twice_? She was probably well beyond that. She was probably _certain_ Myka would say no, _certain_ it was ending.

Myka needs to give her certainty in return. “It isn’t going to end,” she says.

“You don’t know that. You can’t predict the future. Your annual report goes out of its rhetorical way to make that quite clear.”

“So we can’t predict the future. But do you know what we can do?”

“Something inspirational, such as live in the moment?”

Ah. Helena thinks she said too much, so now she’s trying to play off the seriousness. Myka says, “We can remember the past.”

“Count cards?”

She’s still trying, and Myka reminds herself that it hasn’t even been a week. “Count anniversary cards,” she says. “How’s _that_?”

Helena looks back down at the annual report. It’s a thick booklet, well over a hundred pages. She flips through, as if trying to find the right song in a hymnal, the one that the congregation is already singing. She zeroes in on one page, then reads aloud, “‘Some of our products involve the manufacture and/or handling of a variety of explosive and flammable materials. Use of these products by our customers could also result in liability if an explosion, fire, spill or other accident were to occur. We cannot assure you that we will not experience these types of incidents in the future or that these incidents will not result in production delays or otherwise have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.’” She looks up. There is still a mischievous glint in her eye, but she isn’t trying to push back anymore.

Myka is pretty sure her own eyes are starry. “I swear I have never loved you more than I do this minute.”

And Helena laughs: a beautiful, unselfconscious laugh. “I hope you’ll remember that when next I destroy the microwave.”

“That’s what I’ll get as my tattoo: a little exploding microwave. Or maybe a huge one, covering my back. How’s that?”

Helena moves closer again. “If you mar your beautiful back,” she says into Myka’s ear, “I will never remove clothing from it again.”

“Or no tattoo,” Myka says quickly.

She comes home the next day with Abigail’s orange twist-tie wrapped around her ring finger. “It isn’t ideal,” she tells Helena, “even temporarily. It’s cutting off my circulation, and Jane said it looks like I’m in some kind of newfangled splint. Abigail wants to take me out to bars so people will ask if I broke my finger in the same fight with the person who hit my head.”

“And Pete?”

“Pete says I should just make one of the foot-long ties into a collar. So you can lead me around by it. And how was your day, my sweet fiancée?” She leans to give Helena her suddenly customary “fiancée” kiss on the cheek, but Helena turns her head and intercepts her.

A kiss at the end of a day: not a bad day, not a crazy day, just a day. They are standing in the middle of the kitchen, enjoying that kiss, dreamily lost in each other, when Christina walks in. “Ugh,” she says.

“Don’t make deals if you can’t handle the terms,” Myka advises.

Christina exhales her own customary long-suffering sigh. “What’s on your hand?” she asks.

Myka holds her hand out. “A band encrusted with orange diamonds. No, tangerine. Sounds classier.”

Helena laughs and says, “Kumquat? That doesn’t sound good at all. Cantaloupe diamonds. What else?”

“Golden nugget squash diamonds!” Myka crows.

“Nanny Charles!” Christina bellows. “Mom and Myka lost their minds!”

“Don’t bother me unless you have _new_ news to report!” Charles bellows back.

TBC

Note: Props to Olin Corporation, the SEC-mandated poetry of whose annual report I have quoted at length. Seriously, proprietary railcar design, I am not making that up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags: I wish there had been a natural break in this oh-so-long finale, but it's pretty disjointed, and the endcap will be some more of that


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the end of it, for now at least... and for once, I am remembering the link! This final part covers ground vaguely similar to that of Travel's little followup, [Pink](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3280592).

Over time—over a surprisingly short time—being engaged does seem to make Helena feel far more secure. Myka does in essence move to Encino, which has the added bonus of giving her more time with Christina, who continues to insist that she did always know that her mother and Myka would get married. (Claudia apparently had actually known it since very close to day one; the bat-induced bruise was still purpling Myka’s temple when she received a post-it-laden notebook of “information that might be useful to you in, you know, wedding planning,” which Myka is pretty certain must have taken months to put together.) Helena buys Myka a very simple ring—“I made sure she got one that was responsibly sourced, just like you did,” Christina assures her—of small diamonds set in a band; it echoes the band of Helena’s own ring.

“Do you like it?” Helena asks.

“Do I like it. Of course I like it. I like this whole engagement thing. You seem to like it too.”

“I more than like it. All I don’t like is that you’re getting so little sleep.”

“Pete’s been giving me grief about that. I keep trying to explain that it’s mostly because of the commute, and wanting to stay awake longer than usual to spend time with you and Christina and Charles, but all I hear is how much like bunnies you and I are.”

“You are nothing like a bunny. Neither am I, for that matter.”

“I know that. You’re a jaguar, and I’m a… “

“Giraffe,” Helena says, then offers an apologetic, “at least, your sister thinks so.”

“That sounds like a ridiculous combination. If you put them in an enclosure at the zoo together, they’d just look at each other, dumbstruck, like ‘what _are_ you?’ and ‘what do we do now?’”

“If the shoe fits…” Helena muses.

Myka plays along. “What _are_ you?”

“Mm,” Helena hums, and she puts her arms around Myka’s neck. Myka’s long neck. “What could we _possibly_ do now?”

Sometimes they get to answer that question; sometimes they don’t. As happens one night, at an hour when everyone who is in elementary school is supposed to be asleep, or well on her way there: Christina offers the barest facsimile of a knock on Helena and Myka’s bedroom door, then rushes in and leaps onto the bed, saying, “Myka, I was going to ask you before, but I didn’t, so since you and Mom are engaged now, will you please play poker at poker night for parents in two weeks?”

“It’s a fundraiser,” Helena tells Myka, then says to Christina, “I appreciated the knock on the door very much, but you do need to wait until someone invites you to come in.”

Preadolescent eyeroll. “O- _kay_. But Myka, I know if you play, you’d win. If Mom isn’t around, that is. Mom, don’t go.”

“Don’t worry, darling. Myka won’t find me nearly as distracting, now that we’re engaged. And I suppose she might as well start becoming accustomed to the never-ending parade of events, school-related and otherwise.”

Myka listens to this back-and-forth, then sighs. “I’m glad you two have all of this figured out. And it’s a good thing I like you both so much. I guess. Is Steve ever the first-stringer for these events?”

“Sometimes,” Helena says. “So I think you should imagine how many _more_ demands could be made on you.”

“That glass doesn’t seem quite half full.”

“You missed her infancy. Parental responsibilities were far more hands-on then, I assure you.”

Myka says to Christina, “I did miss that. I’m sorry I missed that. If I’d known…”

“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known,” Christina says calmly. Her tone is all her father. She climbs off the bed and turns back into herself as she cackles out a cartoon-villain laugh. “But you can make it up to me by playing poker and _destroying_ all the other parents.”

To Helena, Myka stage-whispers, “She’s a little too enthusiastic about destruction, don’t you think?”

“You’re the one who introduced her to the roller derby,” Helena shrugs. “Not to mention martial arts.”

****

Myka _is_ the one who introduced Christina to martial arts. Not quite two weeks after the engagement, she brought Christina to Winston and said, “Here she is. Nine years old. Knocking me down in six months, right?”

Just one month later, Christina was knocking Myka down with shocking, and painful, regularity. Two months after that, as Myka is driving both of them back to Encino—for what should be the second to last time, as they are supposed to move into the wallpapered wonder of a house in Eagle Rock in less than a month—Myka says something she’s been thinking about saying for some time. “You know, I tell your mom I love her. I tell her that a lot, because I think she likes to hear it, and I like saying it.”

“Okay.” Christina sounds like she’d much rather be playing speed chess on Myka’s phone.

“But it occurs to me,” Myka plows on, “and this is weird, I’ve never actually told _you_.”

“That you love Mom? I pretty much knew it already.”

“No, nut junior, not that I love your mom. That I love _you_.”

“Oh. You do?”

Myka reaches over and knocks Christina’s arm. “I hoped you knew _that_ already.”

“I guess I did. Winston told me.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘Trust me, she isn’t letting you knock her down just because she loves you. She really is that bad.’”

Myka chuckles. “You do his voice really well. And I’d sit here and be offended, but obviously he’s right. I am that bad.”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to be good at it. I still love you.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.” She pushes Myka’s shoulder, very gently. “I thought _you_ knew that already too.”

“Well, I hoped.”

“For a long time,” Christina says, in her most serious voice, “I thought maybe I wasn’t doing it right. Because even at first, I liked you, but I kept waiting to get jealous and be mad at you. My friends, if their moms or their dads get a boyfriend or girlfriend, they hate them, because they’re jealous. And I never hated you, so maybe I was doing it wrong.”

“I always think I’m doing things wrong,” Myka assures her. “And listen, if that happens—if you get jealous—tell me, okay? And your mom. Or just your mom, tell whoever you feel like, but we’ll figure it out. Your mom’s your mom. I’m… I don’t know. I’m just me, and I showed up a little late.” She most likely wouldn’t have done anything any better if she’d shown up in Helena’s life earlier, of course. But Christina might really have had two moms.

“I told you before, that’s okay.” Then she gives Myka her sliest of side glances. “But I’d love you more if you stopped making fun of musicals.”

Myka side-eyes her in return. “I guess I won’t be leveling up then.”

“You have no ambition,” Christina sighs.

Myka grins. “You have no leverage.” Then she frowns. “Except in the ring. How exactly _do_ you manage to knock me down all the time?”

****

When Myka had walked into her apartment for the first time, she’d known it was meant to be hers. “This is where I live,” she’d said, out loud, quietly. She signed the lease on it that day, and she’d lived in it with absolute certainty for ten years. Then Helena and Christina had walked in, and her fine certainty was, literally, a thing of the past.

When she and Helena were touring houses, she waited and waited and waited for that same strong burst of recognition—but this time it had to be “This is where _we_ live,” and she knew that would have to be a different feeling entirely, something a little like having Helena and Christina in her apartment, something a little like being in Encino with them and with Charles. Something she’d never felt before.

It turned out to be almost exactly like the proposal: she never expected to buy a house. Secondarily, she never expected to buy a house for herself _and her family_. And finally, she never expected to buy a house, one for herself and her family, that hadn’t been remodeled or redecorated since the mid-1970s and _also_ looked like its owners been tripping pretty dramatically when they made their wallpapering decisions. But: “I don’t hate it,” she said, and Helena and Christina and Charles didn’t hate it either, and eventually Myka and Helena sat in a small office in a bank and signed every document under the sun, and they took title to a ranch house in Eagle Rock as joint tenants. With rights of survivorship. At a certain point in the signing process, Myka became obsessed with finding out what they would have to do to ensure that the house would become community property once they were married—she might or might not have uttered the words “oh my god we should get married before we take title; can we do that? can we get a license and get married before we finish this? is there time left this afternoon?”—and Helena threatened to duct-tape her mouth closed if she didn’t calm down and keep signing her name. “But you don’t have any duct tape!” Myka wailed, as if she were really hoping to be forcibly silenced, and Helena said, “I have my keychain and I will not hesitate to check the reactivity of your pupils! Do I make myself clear?” Things went a bit more quietly after that.

****

For their Eagle Rock not-house-warming-but-house-steaming party—which actually does warm the house pretty significantly as well, given that it’s early September—Myka rents eight wallpaper steamers, and more than two dozen people take their turns at pulling down strips of densely clustered ducks and shag-patterned orange and psychedelic album-cover pink and huge lavender rosettes and shiny brass gazebos and ocher cuckoo clocks and lime-green-and-turquoise plaid and brick-red trapezoids that look like incompetent masonry crossed with geometry homework. Christina lovingly preserves a piece of each pattern, “because otherwise we’ll forget what they looked like,” she croons. Myka closes her eyes and says, “god willing.”

Myka also drinks a great many bottles of beer, such that by the end of the party, when only she, Helena, Pete, and Abigail remain in the house—Charles is gallantly driving a tipsy Leena home, and Steve has taken Christina back to Encino to spend the night with a group of her friends—she is not falling down, but she is feeling very good. So good, in fact, that she doesn’t even get upset when Helena regales the other two with the story of “Myka’s document-signing tantrum.”

Pete says, “I’ve been wondering, honestly, why you guys haven’t just gone to the courthouse already. I mean you’re practically married right now.”

“My so-called tantrum aside,” Myka tells him, “Claudia would never forgive me if we didn’t have a big wedding. Plus I want a D.J. Playing totally stereotypical wedding dance music.”

“Do you,” Helena says.

“Yes I do. Didn’t expect that, did you?”

“Not really, no.”

“I love to dance, and I am going to dance with you at our wedding. Probably to songs from the same era as our wallpaper, which we’ll never forget thanks to Christina. Do you think she’ll be mad if I burn her little wallpaper scrapbook? She’ll probably be mad. And then, oh god, she’ll try to kill me and Winston will just _egg her on_ …” She’s surprised to find herself standing up, so she leans against the nearest wall. She’s not sure which wall it is, exactly. Probably the one that used to have all the pink on it.

She hears Abigail say, “H.G., just for your reference, as she makes these big dancing plans for this big D.J.-featuring future event, be advised: she _can’t_ dance.”

“Completely true,” Myka tells the wall. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love it.”

Abigail chortles. “Does mean you’re totally embarrassing when you try to do it.”

“Fine.” Myka pushes herself fully upright so she can confront Abigail more directly. “I won’t dance at _your_ wedding. Or maybe I _will_ , just because you’ll hate it. Wait… you’ll YouTube it. I _won’t_ then.”

“Promises, promises,” Abigail says as she laughs in Myka’s face.

Helena says, “Well, you had better dance at ours, because now I want to see this. How bad could it be _really_?”

“Oh, H.G.,” Pete sighs, “it’s like you don’t remember the softball situation. Think back.”

Helena says, “It’s true that she does lack a certain… coordination.”

“Exactly,” Abigail agrees. “And now set that to music and let it loose on a dance floor.”

“I begin to see the problem,” Helena says.

“Oh, you think it’s a problem?” Myka demands. “Traitor. If I weren’t a little bit drunk at this moment, you would be in trouble. Given that I _am_ a little bit drunk, I would like to inform everybody that the party is over, because my fiancée”—she leans over and kisses the traitor she’s engaged to—“is in the opposite of in trouble.”

“I’m taking notes,” Abigail says. “And I’m going to recite this conversation, verbatim, as part of the toast I give, at that wedding with the D.J. and the embarrassing dancing.”

Pete helpfully offers, “Maybe she could take lessons.”

“I _could!_ ” Myka enthuses. She moves her feet in a way intended to approximate a dance step. It doesn’t go well.

Abigail rubs her palms together. “Aaaand more for the toast.”

“I could take lessons and surprise _everybody!_ ” Myka maintains. “Including my extremely pretty fiancée.” She leans over and kisses Helena. “I’m actually really really proud of myself. I hope everybody’s noticed how extremely pretty she is.”

“I’ve noticed,” Pete says, “and you know I’ve noticed, because you said you’d punch me in the face if I said anything about how pretty she is ever again.”

“I did say that. But right now I’m the one saying anything about it. About her. My extremely pretty fiancée.” This time, when she leans to Helena, Helena does the thing where she turns the cheek-kiss into a real kiss. A brief real kiss, but it’s still very very nice.

Abigail says, “Well, I think she’s pretty too. Not my type, as I’ve said in the past, but pretty.”

“Thank you, Abigail,” Helena says. “That’s very sweet of you. You’re not my type either, but I think you’re lovely as well.”

“My extremely pretty _and polite_ fiancée,” Myka says to the air; she aims to kiss Helena’s cheek again, but this time hits her ear. That’s okay, though, because it’s such a _pretty_ ear. To Abigail, Myka says, “You, I won’t punch in the face. If only because you’d punch me back and most likely knock me out.”

“Hey!” Pete says. “I could totally knock you out!”

“Would I not knock you out first?” Myka demands.

Pete hangs his head. “Right. Yeah. You would.” Then he perks up. “Except for right now, when I think I’ve got the edge.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d _miss_.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re _hammered_.”

“You’re a big target,” Myka reminds him.

Pete snorts. “Well, so’s a softball, but you can’t hit those either.”

So naturally she takes a swing at him; he dodges her fist easily, and she ends up sitting on the floor, looking up at all three of them. Pete and Abigail are laughing, and Helena’s smiling.

Myka points at Pete. “You don’t drink.” At Abigail: “You never have more than two.” At Helena: “But you. Why exactly aren’t you feeling any effects?”

Helena keeps smiling. “Of?”

“You had plenty of beer bottles in your hands! Not all at once. One at a time.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t feeling… effects. I’ve just been keeping quiet about it. The better to surprise you later.”

“So damn lucky,” Pete says, shaking his head.

“Surprise me with what?” Myka asks.

“Lucky but obtuse,” Abigail says to Pete.

Helena leans down and whispers in Myka’s ear, “Let’s start with ‘a lack of inhibitions’ and work our way down, shall we?”

“Um. Okay. We can do that. We can certainly do that. Pete, Abigail, go away.”

“Lucky, obtuse, and _rude_ ,” Pete says, but he helps Myka up off the floor anyway.

“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” Myka tries to explain. “But she just said—”

“Something that you will be mortified to have said aloud in front of company,” Helena interrupts. “And I suspect you won’t want it taking pride of place in anyone’s wedding toast.”

“Neither of you is any fun at all,” Abigail complains, but she pulls Pete out the door with her.

“Are they together?” Helena asks Myka. “I wouldn’t have thought… but of course I thought _you_ and Pete might have been together, so I don’t—”

“No, no, no. No. On all counts no. No. Pete’s still hung up on his ex, and Abigail…” Myka starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“Abigail’s really happy by herself. She doesn’t need anybody.” Still laughing, Myka pulls Helena into her arms. “I used to think she and I were so much alike. Can you believe that?”

“I did believe it,” Helena says. “That’s why I thought—”

“Stop it.” Myka kisses her, a kiss intended to prevent her from thinking at all, about what she used to believe, about anything that happened before, maybe even before this very minute, this kiss that they get to fall into and through and Myka remembers somebody had said something about a lack of inhibitions… and thank god those are gone, because that way, there is no self-consciousness about the lack of finesse with which they get each other out of clothes and into bed, about the clumsiness with which they touch and delve and move their mouths… and if neither could claim to have put on a particularly impressive show? Well, who needs impressive when you can have effective?

“I’ll be sore tomorrow,” Helena says, with a stretch against Myka’s side that would, if Myka were not so tired, make her start again. “I’ll be in such _pain_.”

She sounds happy about it, and Myka intends to play along as she says, “Oh god, will you? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Myka babbles it more times than she can count, until she’s not kidding anymore but is serious, until Helena again threatens her with duct tape. “Or wallpaper,” she amends after a moment.

“Wallpaper,” Myka sighs out. “Did we really buy a house?”

“I fear so. This one, in fact.”

“I’ve never bought a house before.”

“That became clear when we signed documents. But there is, as they say, a first time for everything.”

“And we’re really going to live here together?”

“That does seem to be the general idea.”

“This is really not what I expected would happen.”

“And yet it is what everyone else expected would happen. Once we met.”

“Once we met. The first time I saw you, I thought you were perfect.” That vision in the cab, Myka’s dumbstruck response to that vision, that and everything that followed. _You’re perfect and I love you_ , said aloud in circumstances not very different—yet completely different—from the situation they are in at this very moment.

“Closer acquaintance has clearly disabused you of that notion.”

“It hasn’t really. And I don’t tell you enough, how often you’re perfect. How much you’re perfect. How perfect you are _for me_. Here, like this.” She feels Helena mouthing at her ear, echoing “like this.” Myka goes on, “You’ve always been, and I haven’t been. I’m sorry.”

Helena pulls away from Myka’s ear but keeps her voice low. “You say you’re sorry far too often. “

“I have a lot of regrets.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

Myka does know, but: “I want to be perfect for you too,” is the best she can come up with. “And I’m sorry when I’m not.”

“All right, you’re not perfect for me,” Helena says. “You’re never going to be, and I’m certainly not perfect for you, either, in bed or anywhere else. Look how I swept in and blithely dismantled your life. You can’t tell me someone who was truly perfect for you would _ever_ have made you drive to Encino.”

“Regularly,” Myka concedes.

“Extraordinarily,” Helena corrects. “And someone perfect for you wouldn’t be the mother of a nine-year-old.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Myka protests.

“Who forces you to chaperone a field trip to gaze upon giant sequoias?”

“It’s true I wasn’t hugely into that. I mean, once you’ve confirmed that they’re giant… but it worked out fine in the end.” It had. Christina and her friends had lectured Myka on the finer points of Minecraft strategy, which was itself sort of mind-numbing, but far less so than the giant sequoias.

“It didn’t work out fine the time Charles walked in on us in the kitchen.”

“That worked out worse for you than it did for me. I had all my clothes on.”

“Not _all_ your clothes. Not technically.” She nuzzles at Myka’s ear again, moves down her neck.

“He couldn’t see what I did and didn’t have on.” Myka shudders. “Thank god.”

“It’s extremely amusing to me how relatively phlegmatic you are about it now, while at the time, if I’m recalling correctly, you apologized profusely for putting me in a compromising position—despite the fact that I’m fairly certain _I_ suggested that particular… position. Then you said, and I quote, ‘if you wake up tomorrow and find him dead, I’m the one who killed him.’ You said it with great sincerity.”

“I realize I can’t kill him. He’s your brother. He’s your brother, and I know that all our lives would basically be impossible without him. And I really do like him. But still.”

“You see? I’m not perfect for you, and you’re not perfect for me. But isn’t it wonderful?” She slides on top of Myka, then sits up, straddling her. Myka isn’t sure when Helena pulled on a T-shirt, but she did— _only_ a T-shirt. It must have been beside the bed; it is one of a few that Myka had had made when she had her own firm, years ago: “Bering Financial Management,” it trumpets in a preposterously dated font. Helena had found it in the back of a dresser drawer and immediately appropriated it; she refrains from wearing it in public only because Myka begged, yet here, in the most private of private moments, Myka finds it disorienting, a funhouse-mirror combination of past, present, and future. Myka doesn’t know who she is anymore, when she gazes into that mirror, but Helena says, “Myka, look at us. Isn’t it wonderful?”

****

You get into a cab, and you think you know what will happen next.

Because you are meticulous, and you follow the rules. Because you can remember what happened five minutes ago, and you’re very good at making forward-looking statements.

You get into a cab, and you think you know where it’s going to take you.

But then you’re driving every night into a garage, looking at a _mural_. You’re applauding at a _tap recital_. You’re buying a new microwave oven _again_. You’re registering online for _fantasy football_. You’re in a bed in a house in Eagle Rock, and you’re making love to your _wife_.

You get into a cab, and so does the most perfect woman in the world. And that cab brings you _here_.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr tags: it physically pains me to close the book on these two again, I didn't think I wanted to write this, but grumpyyetamusing asked, and I did miss them, I missed them so much, this weirdly diffident Myka, this insecure nutjob Helena, I miss them again already, I guess the thing is, when other people have power over what you write, it's important not to get too attached to anything, characters or narratives or dialogue or turns of phrase, you change what you're told to change, you shake it off and let it go, but this venue is so different, I feel like I've let all that bottled-up investment make its way here, so everybody should call me on it when it gets too self-indulgent, I mean this whole Traverse thing isn't even a story right?, it's just me in the mental gym doing dialogue crunches, and internal monologue lifts, with the occasional description sprint, god I suck at metaphor


End file.
